


Not Just For Hallmark Specials Anymore

by Snickfic



Category: Supernatural RPF
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Mpreg, Winter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-30
Updated: 2013-10-04
Packaged: 2017-12-28 02:33:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 24,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/986634
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Snickfic/pseuds/Snickfic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jensen's a pregnant omega running away from his past, and Danneel's the beta whose cafe he stumbles into. One night's shelter turns into a long-term arrangement, and Danneel finds herself falling for him, even though beta/omega relationships are considered pretty weird, and female!beta/male!omega relationships are considered <i>really</i> weird.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a prompt at the SPN kink meme.

Outside the café windows, snow’s coming down in huge heavy flakes that melt when they hit the ground. The streets are mush – icy, sloppy mush that’ll turn dangerously slick if the temp drops even a half a degree more. Danneel doesn’t want to think about what driving would be like right now, and takes a moment from chopping tomatoes to appreciate that she doesn’t have to.

The breakfast crowd has trickled out, and the lunch crowd hasn’t yet trickled in. Given the weather, Danneel isn’t anticipating much of a lunch rush. At the moment her only customer is Mr. Budziszewski, who’s sipping his third cup of coffee and ruminating moodily over his sudoku puzzle. He’ll want at least one more refill, plus a Danish if he’s feeling extravagant, before he makes his way slowly back down the sidewalk to Silverwood Luxury Living, one block over.

The bell over the door rings, and Danneel calls out, “Be right there.”

“Okay.” The voice is male, a little hoarse. Danneel doesn’t recognize it – not one of the regulars, then. This doesn’t really seem like the kind of day for trying out new cuisine. 

Danneel washes tomato juice off her hands and comes around to the front. The guys looks about like she expects someone to look, coming in on a day like today: damp, bedraggled, and wrapped up tight. She can’t make out much of him under the hat and scarf. “What can I do for you?”

“Um.” Now that she’s closer, his voice sounds worse. Nasty cold, she thinks. “I, um. I’m from out of town. My car broke down, I think. Out front.” He points a thumb behind him. “It’s okay, I have Triple A, but my cell battery’s dead. Could I use your phone?” The caution in his voice sounds like more than mere politeness; it sounds like her answer is actually in doubt.

“Yeah, sure, of course.” She waves him down to the other end of the counter and hands him the cordless phone. When he reaches for it, she catches a glimpse of the silver cuff on his wrist. _Omega_. Huh. She wonders where his alpha is, and then chides herself. Supposedly she learned better than that at college, but the thought is habitual, ingrained.

Just for that, she makes a point of trying _not_ to eavesdrop. The café isn’t large, though. She hears his sharp, disbelieving, “ _How_ long?” and the hard sigh that follows. When he hangs up, she comes over to take the phone from him and put it back on the hook.

“Bad news?”

“Tow trucks are all out. Weather, I guess.”

“It’s pretty gross,” she agrees. “Lots of people sliding off the road.”

“Right.” 

“You getting it towed to Williams’?” He starts, and then his eyes narrow in suspicion. Danneel shrugs. “It’s the closest place. Steven’s a friend.”

He seems to relax a little. Uptight, this one. “Yeah. That’s the place.”

“So in the meantime, you should sit and eat soup.”

His eyes crinkle with a hint of humor. They’re nice eyes, Danneel thinks. “I should?” 

“The first batch of tomato won’t be out for an hour, but the minestrone’s nearly ready.”

“Awesome,” he says, like he almost means it.

So she sits him down in a booth and brings him a bowl of minestrone – he might have said he just wanted a cup, and she might have misheard him – and then watches with some satisfaction as he unwraps a bunch of his outer layers and sips on his soup. He’d be kind of hot, she thinks, if he didn’t look so tired.

Then she loses track of him, because enough people brave the weather to keep the café hopping. Marta, the usual lunch help, comes in half an hour late, flushed and apologetic, and Danneel tries not to roll her eyes and sets her to work.

When there’s finally a lull, though, Danneel looks for him, and there he is, still. His bowl’s empty and set to the side. He’s slumped against the back of the booth, and he’s so still she wonders if he’s asleep. 

Danneel has a tiny internal voice, prone to swearing, that knows her really, really well. Very quietly, it says, _Damn it_.

\--

Danneel leaves the lunch mess to Marta – serves her right – and takes two mugs of coffee out to the booth where her stranded omega stranger is still sitting. She slides into the opposite seat and sets one of the mugs in front of him. At his questioning look, she says, “On the house.” He starts to say something, and she talks over him. “I called Steven,” she says. When the guy looks unenlightened, she adds, “From the auto shop. He says he’s still got at least an hour before any of the trucks can get to you.”

The guy snorts. There’s no humor in it. “Figures.”

“And I’m closing up here soon.” At two o’clock, technically, in twenty minutes, although Danneel doesn’t start actively kicking people out before half-past two. This guy’s the only one left, though.

“Right.” He nods. “I’ll just, um. I’ll go find something that’s still open, and, uh, hang out.”

And, okay. Danneel runs a café in a town small enough that she knows two-thirds of her customers by name. She went away to the big city for college; she has enough perspective to know that Hilldale is old-fashioned bordering on quaint, and that what works here doesn’t work everywhere.

But she _is_ here, and there’s this guy in front of her who’s working on at least a seven-day cold, with a defeat in the slump of his shoulders that she thinks might be a lot older than a week.

The fact that he’s omega doesn’t hurt, either. He doesn’t feel in any way a threat, not like an alpha might. She doesn’t like it, buying into the sexist stereotypes, but instinct runs on stereotypes, and instinct says she needs to do something here.

“I have the apartment over the café,” she says. He looks at her, blank, clearly not understanding where she’s going nor able to work up the energy to care. “I’ll ring Steven, tell him to give me a call when it looks like the tow truck’s coming. And you can come upstairs and, I don’t know, nap on my couch? Take a shower?”

“A shower?”

She shrugs. “It might be good for your sinuses.”

“You don’t know me,” he says.

She lifts an eyebrow. “You don’t know me, either.”

And if he said no thank you, he’d manage, then she’d believe him. Guy’s an adult; he’d figure it out. She’d send him to Traci’s coffee joint down the street, and Traci’d send him along to a hotel if he ended up needing one, and that would be that. 

It’s when he drops his gaze and nods that her heart starts to break for him a little. Never let it be said that Danneel Harris isn’t a sap.

\--

As they climb the stairs, Danneel calls back, “I’m Danneel, by the way.”

There’s no answer. When she gets to her apartment door, she turns around, lifts an eyebrow, and waits. Omega or not, she’s not sure she’s cool with letting a guy into her apartment if he won’t even give her a name.

He stares back for a little bit, and finally he offers, “Jensen.”

Or, he could make one up on the spot. Which it kinda sounds like he did. “First or last name?”

“First.” There’s another pause, shorter this time. “Jensen Ackles.” He looks defiantly up at her, like he’s daring her to believe him. Or maybe to go turn him in.

Danneel manages a grin. “Nice to meet you.” 

“Uh, yeah.” His eyes drop. “Thanks, I guess. For having me up.”

“No problem.” Danneel turns her back and unlocks her door. Her instinct about him hasn’t changed; if it does later, there’s always Google. 

Once inside, she offers him more coffee, which he turns down; her guest bed, which he wavers on; and a shower, which he accepts. “You get so grimy on the road, you know?” He offers the words like an apology, but Danneel’s pretty sure it’s the first thing he’s volunteered since he first walked into the cafe this morning. 

She wishes she’d thought to follow him out to his car when he got his suitcase, so she could see where his license plates were from. 

Twenty minutes later, Jensen is back out of the shower. He walks into the kitchen, and Danneel’s train of thought stutters to a halt. He looks younger than before; she’d figured him for mid thirties, but now, refreshed and clean-shaven, he’s clearly no older than she is – late twenties at most. More to the point, he’s _very_ pretty, even in a faded old hoodie two sizes too big. He’s a pretty, pretty man.

Ideally, Danneel will get him out of her apartment before she does anything inappropriate, like try to mack on him, the guy she meant to help. The omega guy, she reminds herself, which helps some. Omegas don’t have much use for betas, at least in the sexual sense. She tries to work up some enthusiasm for that fact and then pushes the whole topic aside.

“Steven called,” she says. “He says he thinks there’ll be a tow for you by four o’clock, but that there’s no way he’ll be able to do anything useful on your car until tomorrow.”

She watches as all that new energy Jensen got from his shower just drains out of him. “Damn it,” he says softly. 

“You could call around, try some of the other auto shops, but this late in the day, I doubt they’ll be able to get you in any faster.”

“Yeah. Figures.”

“So you have a couple of options now,” she says. “I can drop you off at a hotel after your car gets towed.”

He’s already nodding.

“Or you can stay here.” She can see his protest already forming on his lips. “I have a spare bed just waiting for weary travelers like yourself. I have wi-fi and cold medicine and leftover tomato soup – or more minestrone, if you’d rather have that.”

“It’s okay,” he says, shaking his head. “I appreciate it, but a hotel sounds fine.”

No lie, she’s a little disappointed, but it’s his prerogative not to pander to her care-and-feeding fantasies. “Sure. In the meantime, you want something else to eat? A nap? You’ve got an hour or more. I can wake you when they get here.” 

“I...” He’s going to turn her down, and that’s fair. There’s something weirdly intimate about the idea of it, giving a stranger her bed, even if it’s her spare one. Finally Jensen nods, though. “A nap would be awesome, actually.”

\--

Jensen looks a lot better when she knocks on his door to wake him. Soon he’s got his bag all packed again, and she promises to drop him off at the hotel of his choice after he finishes overseeing the towing. 

He looks less perky when she picks him up from Steven’s an hour later. He opts for the Super 8 just three blocks over, two up from Steven’s place, which is convenient. Well, it’s convenient right up until they turn out to be full. The weather’s stranded more people than just Jensen.

“There’s a Sheridan down a ways,” Danneel says. “Or my spare bedroom is still open.”

“I—” Jensen’s words are lost in a harsh, rasping cough. It sounds like it hurts. He’s paler than he was earlier today. He’s used up everything he gained from the nap, it looks like; he’s just used up, period. In Danneel’s entirely nonprofessional medical opinion, this is a man who needs to sleep for a week, preferably accompanied by lots of soup. 

When he’s recovered enough to speak, he asks, “And you’re _sure_? Weird guy in your house? Just for tonight. I swear I’ll get out of your hair tomorrow.”

“Very sure.”

“Then yeah. That’d be... Thank you.”

“Cool,” Danneel says, and turns the car around.

\--

Dinner is quiet. Jensen clearly doesn’t have the energy for conversation, and Danneel figures it’d be pretty crummy to lure a guy from the promise of a quiet, private, extremely impersonal motel room just to pester him with personal questions.

She tells him a little about Hilldale, because she can’t help herself; it’s too quiet otherwise. She explains about her mom dying when Danneel was fifteen, about coming to live with Bertie in Bertie’s house a few blocks over and working in the café after school most days. “It’s her café,” Danneel explains. “I think she was just keeping it going until I got back from college. Now she spends all winter knitting and all summer poking at azaleas and dahlias and things. Says she has some little little-old-ladying to catch up on.”

“ _Is_ she a little old lady?” Jensen asks, sounding genuinely curious.

Danneel snorts. “She’d like you to think so. She thinks looking innocuous is good camouflage.” When Jensen just looks confused, Danneel adds, “She’s eighty-four and shorter than me, so technically yeah, I guess so.”

“Alpha?” 

Danneel blinks. He’s an omega; of course he wants to know these things. Danneel always forgets. “Beta,” she says. “Like me. Which you knew, because you can smell me. And now I’m embarrassed, and I’m going to go get dessert.”

When Danneel gets back with two squares of raspberry crumble, Jensen’s got the sleeve of his hoodie pulled up just enough for him to fidget with his silver bonding cuff. It’s not like Danneel’s spent a ton of time looking at those – rings are metal enough for betas, thanks - but Gen demanded that Danneel appreciate every detail of hers and Jared’s when they first got them. The workmanship on this one looks less careful, though, and also less sturdy. Not to mention...

“Your cuff is turning your wrist green,” Danneel says.

Jensen glances down and immediately thrusts his cuff back under his sleeve. Defiantly he meets her eyes. “It’s fake,” he says. “I’m not bonded.”

“I figured.” Danneel waits. When Jensen just keeps staring at her, she adds, “In college I used to go clubbing sometimes – which I was really bad at, by the way. And a lot of the time I’d wear a ring on my ring finger, so guys wouldn’t hassle me.”

“I... yeah. That’s what it’s for. Omega on a cross-country road trip? I figured I could use the, um. The camouflage.”

Danneel nods. She has trouble imagining he’d actually get hassled much – he’s a decently big guy, broad shoulders. Then again, Jared’s made faces a couple of times when she’s made comments like that around him, and he’s built like a tree. Maybe it’s one of those alpha/omega things Danneel will never get.

“I’m going home,” Jensen says suddenly. “My alpha kicked me out, and I quit my job, and now I’m going home.”

Danneel can’t really stop to appreciate that Jensen’s just spilled his guts to her. Her brain is still stuck a few phrases back. “Your alpha kicked you out?” Distantly, she recognizes the tone in her voice. It’s the one that used to clear the café when Bertie used it.

“We weren’t serious, apparently,” Jensen says. Danneel can hear that his voice is on the edge of breaking. “And he never wanted...” Danneel waits, but Jensen doesn’t finish. Finally he shrugs. “I just, I was going to get away, carve my own life out, _do_ something. Instead I screwed up my entire life, and now I get to go home and tell my family about it. And probably take the same job my dad offered me before I left, if he’ll let me have it.”

“Well, a job is good,” she says, trying to find the bright side. “And you have a family at home that cares about you...?” She trails off; it’s hardly a safe assumption.

Jensen nods, though. “They won’t even tell me I told you so. They’ll just think it.”

“So that’s good.”

“Yeah.” He sounds unconvinced. Danneel supposes she would be, too.

“It doesn’t sound like anything’s broken that can’t be fixed. Except your heart, maybe.” She offers him a sad little smile, trying to convey that she doesn’t mean to make light.

His expression only turns bleaker. “Yeah. It sounds like that, doesn’t it?”

There doesn’t seem to be much to say to that. Danneel hesitates, and then she leans over and rubs his arm, like she would Jared’s if he were having a really awful day and Gen wasn’t around to kiss it better.

Jensen’s next couple of breaths are shaky, and then he swallows, and he returns that sad smile she gave him earlier. “Thanks. For listening and everything. I guess everyone needs someone to tell, right?”

_Why don’t you break my heart a little more, Jensen Ackles?_

“No problem,” Danneel says.

\--

She isn’t snooping. She’s aware she has a weakness for it, and she tries hard to rein that weakness in. She’s legitimately checking the guest bathroom to make sure her shampoo and towel supplies are holding up, and there they are, two little bottles of pills sitting next to the sink. Even then she maybe could have escaped from the bathroom still ignorant and unsnoopy, except Jared used to take exactly those two brands of pills, and Gen made it her job to take them with her every time the two of them went anywhere.

So Danneel recognizes the bottles and what they mean, and a lot of things come clear. She’s dumb, maybe, that this didn’t occur to her before. She doesn’t see what the knowledge is going to do for her, though, so she tucks it away and goes looking for fresh washcloths.

\--

This time of year, there’s still a couple of hours of night left when Danneel gets up. She spends a few moments with her email and her Earl Gray. Hilldale has accustomed itself to espresso, but the delicate pleasures of loose-leaf tea are still beyond its collective grasp; for now, Danneel only drinks it outside of work, which is nice in its own way.

When she’s put on her apron and sturdy work sneakers, she pauses by the guest bedroom door. Jensen’s snore drifts faintly through it, and Danneel winces in sympathy. Then she writes him a note - _Help yourself to breakfast, or you can come get something downstairs_ \- and leaves it on the kitchen counter, tucked under an oatmeal canister. Then she goes down to start opening the café.

When the a mid-morning lull hits, Jensen has yet to make an appearance. Aaron, the kid who opens with Danneel, is still on the clock for another fifteen minutes, so Danneel takes the opportunity for a bathroom break and a peek upstairs. She opens her door to an empty apartment and wonders if Jensen gathered his things and went out the back way without ever saying good-bye. It seems unlikely, though; he doesn’t seem like the cut-and-run kind. Except for how it sounds like that’s exactly what he did when he started this trip. Not that Danneel can blame him for it.

There’s a dirty dish in the sink, however, and Jensen’s door is once again firmly shut, though she can’t hear any snoring now. His coat is still hanging on the coat hook, which seems to settle the question. Quietly, Danneel goes back downstairs to work.

When the café is closed for the day and she returns to the apartment, he’s awake, hunched on her sofa. There’s a mug of steaming something in his hands. He looks up as she opens the door; he isn’t quite so pale as yesterday. “Hey,” he croaks.

“You look better,” Danneel observes, “but you sound worse.”

“Yeah.”

“I’m going to take a shower,” Danneel decides. “I smell like beer cheese soup.”

Jensen’s still in the same spot a few minutes later, although his drink - chamomile tea, says the tag hanging over the side - is mostly gone. Danneel puts on the kettle for a cup of tea of her own and slumps down at the other end of the sofa. 

“Did you hear from Steven?” she asks.

“Yeah,” Jensen says gloomily. “He had to order a part. He thinks the car might be ready tomorrow. Or Friday.”

“Ouch, that sucks.”

“Yeah.” 

“So,” Danneel says, “am I taking you down to the Super 8 in a little while?”

“Uh,” Jensen says. “Yeah, definitely.” He sets his mug on the coffee table and starts to stagger to his feet, and he looks so reluctant doing it that Danneel wants to laugh at him. 

Instead she catches his arm and tugs him back onto the sofa - not hard; his balance doesn’t look to be all that great just now. “You don’t have to go.”

Jensen opens his mouth to protest, and starts coughing again. Ouch. No wonder his voice sounds so bad. Eventually, though, he manages to say, “You don’t need some sick stranger huddling on your couch for the next two days.”

“Well, I don’t _not_ need one, either. It’s not like you’re putting me out.”

“Right,” Jensen says doubtfully.

“If you think you’d be more comfortable someplace where you don’t have to, like, make conversation or see anyone, then go for it. But if you’d rather be here, where leftover soup magically appears daily and there’s plenty of tea, then stay.”

“You don’t _know_ me,” Jensen says. The fact seems to frustrate him.

“I know you haven’t been able to catch a break lately. I just want to offer you one, if you want it.”

“Well, don’t you have all the answers.”

Danneel doesn’t dignify that with a response. She waits.

Jensen snorts. “You’re a cannibal,” he says finally. “You’re going to cut me up and put me in a stew and serve it to your customers, and no one will even know to ask what happened to Jensen Ackles.”

“It is a risk,” Danneel agrees gravely.

Jensen blows out a breath, which brings on a couple seconds more coughing. When he recovers, he says, “I guess it’s a risk I’ll take, then.”

\--

Jensen spends all the next day in the apartment, too. From his comments when Danneel comes home with a soup pot of chicken and wild rice, it sounds like he spent most of it asleep, which Danneel approves of. He stays awake long enough that evening to watch an old Sandra Bullock movie with her and argue its merits - “Nobody gives her enough credit as an actress. There’s no way you’d guess she’s an omega playing against all these alpha co-stars.” 

He argues quietly, though, which Danneel doesn’t think can be entirely blamed on the cough, and once he’s made a point, he’s not willing to push it. Danneel wonders how much of that reserve is native to him and how much is learned. Bit of both, maybe.

Danneel turns in at eight, as is required for getting up at the hour she does, and she doesn’t think it’s much later that she hears the door across the hall pull softly shut.

\--

Danneel doesn’t really expect Jensen to ever venture down into the café. That he does the next morning around nine-thirty is in no way a disappointment. “Hi,” she says, grinning widely.

“I didn’t really want more oatmeal,” Jensen says. His voice is raspy, but much improved over yesterday. “I figured I could probably do better down here.”

“Oh, you can do much, much better here,” Danneel promises. Thinking back, that sounds a lot sexier than she meant. Drat. “What can I get you?”

“I’m not sure yet,” Jensen says.

“Hot or cold?”

“Um. Hot? And relatively healthy?”

“If you don’t mind cholesterol, then what you want is an omelette – they’re our specialty. You should order the veggie delight. It has vegetables in it,” she adds helpfully.

He laughs, and Danneel’s suddenly a little glad that he won’t be around much longer, because a girl could spend a lot of her life working on getting him to smile like that. “A veggie delight sounds great,” he says.

Outside, it’s snowing blankets again, and all but the die-hards have stayed home today. When everyone’s immediate needs are taken care of, Danneel leaves the kitchen to Aaron and sits down in Jensen’s booth.

“And?” she asks, nodding towards his rapidly disappearing omelette.

“You were right,” Jensen says. 

“Of course I was.”

“It’s hot, _and_ it has vegetables in it.”

“You _jerk_ ,” says Danneel, too startled Jensen’s teasing to even try and hold back her grin. “I’ve bestowed my hospitality on a jerk.”

Jensen grins back, looking faintly pleased with himself.

“Speaking of,” Danneel says, “your car’s almost fixed, right?”

Jensen’s pleased expression falls away. “This afternoon, I can pick it up. I thought maybe you could give me a lift?”

“No problem,” Danneel says. “As soon as we close, I’ll run you over there.” She considers his expression a little while, and then she asks, “This is good, right? You can finally go home.”

He tries to fake a smile. It doesn’t work very well. “Yeah. Vacation’s over.”

Danneel snorts. “Seriously? It’s snowed every day since you got here, and you were hacking up your lungs most of the time.”

“Good food, though,” he says, but he looks uncomfortable now, embarrassed. Crap, she’s embarrassed him.

Danneel lowers her voice. “Is it so awful, going home?”

He stares down at the half-empty coffee mug between his hands, and she thinks maybe he won’t answer. She wouldn’t blame him; Steven would tell her she’s prying again. Eventually, though, he says, “It’s nice not having to think about things for a while. There’s nothing I have to do here, no plans I have to make. I can just... sit.” He glances up at her, his expression turning wry. “Or hide, I guess.” He laughs. It’s a thin, brittle sound. “I saw that sign on your door, you know, help wanted? I’ve never worked in a café, but I did a Starbucks stint once. And I thought, I could just stay. I could brew coffee and learn how to make veggie omelettes and...” His shoulders hitch, just once. “And not have to deal.”

The first response Danneel can think of to this confession is, “Omelettes aren’t hard. You’d be surprised.”

Jensen laughs again, a little less thinly this time. “You say that. You probably have the omelette-making gift.”

“You could learn,” Danneel assures him, unsure exactly what point she’s trying to make.

Just then, the bell over the door rings, which means Danneel has to go do things. When she has time to look for Jensen again, he’s gone.

\--

Danneel is distracted the rest of the work day. Marta – seriously, _Marta_ \- points out a mistake in Danneel’s figures for the next week’s dairy order. 

She’s having an idea, is Danneel. This rarely bodes well. At the very least, it results in people questioning the soundness of her judgment and the validity of her life choices – not that that’s new, exactly, but it’s a little harder to deal with when she _knows_ she’s taking a gamble. 

Bertie always backs her play, though, and much as Gen rolls her eyes and makes dire pronouncements, she never, ever says _I told you so_. That’s some comfort.

In the end, it’s instinct. It’s what Danneel’s been running on this whole time – never mind that bullcrap about betas having no instinct, only brain – and she doesn’t see the point in stopping now. 

\-- 

As soon as Danneel’s flipped the sign to CLOSED and locked the door, she heads back upstairs. Jensen’s on the couch, eyes fixed on some daytime talk show program that she’s sure he isn’t watching. As she shuts the door behind her, he gets to his feet and starts moving in the direction of his suitcase, repacked and waiting at the end of the couch.

“Wait,” Danneel says. Jensen pauses. “Could you come sit down for a minute?” 

Frowning, Jensen returns to his seat. He looks anxious, unsettled. That’s fair, because she’s pretty sure that’s how she sounds. She sits down at the other end, leaving lots of space between them. The silence drags out, because now that Danneel’s sitting here about to say this, she’s not quite sure how to start.

Finally, Jensen asks, “Is something wrong?”

“No! No, I’m sorry. I just, um.” Danneel takes a deep breath. “Look, you mentioned I’m looking for help in the café. Well, I am. I’m basically a whole person short, all the time. Aaron has school starting mid-morning, so he can’t come on full-time, and Marta...” Danneel pauses. Possibly this is not the right point in the relationship to describe the many and varied flaws with which Marta is blessed. “Marta’s not suitable.”

“Okay?” Jensen looks mystified.

“I can pay decent wages, though. I mean, relative to the cost of living here.”

Jensen blinks at her. “Are you offering me a job?”

“A job, and a place to stay, if you want it.” Danneel’s sweeping gesture takes in the whole apartment. “I mean, there are other apartments in town, but until you got something else, you could stay. Here.”

Everything in Jensen’s expression has already turned her down. “I can’t ask you to do that.”

Danneel steels herself. “You didn’t. I’m offering.”

“ _Why_?”

Danneel tries to remember that the air of pleading in his voice is as likely to be because she’s being weird and overhelpful as because his life has been just that devoid of kindness. “It’s what I do,” she explains. “I take in strays. I’ve had teenagers stay in the spare room a couple of times, when they decided they wanted to run away. Eventually they decided they’d rather go back home again, but it’s nice that they were somewhere safe in the meantime, right?” 

Now _she’s_ pleading, but she wants him to understand. For reasons she doesn’t care to examine, she’d rather he didn’t think she was some kind of creep. Besides, even if he turns her down, she wants him to know that someone genuine and non-creepy cared enough to want to help. 

“So I’m the latest in a long line?” He’s smiling, but she doesn’t think he’s making fun.

“Something like that.”

“I guess I get that.” He licks his lips, and stares down at his shoes a moment before swinging his gaze back up to her. “So you’re serious.”

“Hey, I seriously need the help. You have no idea. I mean, if you’re interested, we can talk specifics - wages and hours and stuff.”

“That sounds...” He rubs the back of his neck. “That sounds kind of awesome, actually.”

Danneel tries to keep her expression from being too hopeful.

“There’s something you need to know before you make me an offer like that.” Jensen pauses. Danneel’s pretty sure she knows what he’s going to say. She lets the pause draw out; he can take all the time he needs. Finally, he drops his gaze and says, “I’m... I’m pregnant.”

“I know.” Jensen’s head snaps up. As gently as she knows how, Danneel explains, “You left your pre-natals out on the bathroom counter.”

Just like that, he wilts, right before her eyes. “You knew?” He looks some awful combination of betrayed and defeated. “Is that what this is about? Is that why you asked me?”

“I’m pretty sure I’d have made the offer either way. Except if you weren’t...” She pauses; the word seems so heavy, to lay on shoulders already so weighed down. “If you weren’t pregnant, I don’t think you’d have needed me to.”

He laughs, sharp and humorless. “Probably not. It’s why we broke up, you know? Todd never wanted kids.” 

That’s a whole world of pain right there, and they don’t have the space - or in Jensen’s case, probably the heart - to deal with it just now. 

“Anyway,” Danneel says, “the offer’s still open. However long you want to stay.”

“You don’t really want that. You don’t want a pregnant unbonded omega living in your apartment, working in your café.” His smile is gentle. “What would the neighbors say?”

Danneel snorts. “Whatever the heck they want. What do I care?”

Jensen looks startled, but he lets that pass for the moment, though he doesn’t look like he really believes her. “You do realize that eventually there’s going to be a baby. You’re not asking me to raise my kid in your apartment. Are you?”

“I hadn’t planned that far ahead,” Danneel admits. “But look, Jensen. I grew up here. I know half the apartment managers in town, or their kids. My friend Julie’s a midwife. If this is something you want, to make a fresh start here or just take a break from all the yuck you’ve been dealing with, we can make it happen.”

“I... I don’t really know what to say,” Jensen says. “I need to think about this, okay?”

“Sure. No pressure.”

“For now, can we go get my car?”

“Yeah. Of course we can.”

\--

The short drive to Steven’s is quiet. Jensen stares out the window, caught up in his own thoughts, and Danneel leaves him to them. When they arrive, Jensen asks, “Can you hang on a few minutes?”

“Sure,” Danneel says. She’s not certain what she’s waiting for, other than a yay or nay, but she’s got nowhere in particular to be.

She watches through the window as Jensen listens to Steven, nodding occasionally. Finally he walks out the door, keys glinting in one hand. He catches Danneel’s eye, holds up a finger, and mouths, _Just a minute_. Then he makes a phone call on his cell. His back’s to her, so she can’t tell his expression. It’s maybe five minutes before he jabs a finger at the phone and sticks it back in his pocket. Then he strides over to her car, opens the door, and slides into the passenger seat.

“Everything okay?” Danneel asks. From the look on Jensen’s face, everything is not okay. In fact, things might be pretty darn bleak.

“Just, my dad. I guess Mom got him up to speed since I talked to him last.”

“And?”

Jensen looks down at his hands, folded in his lap. “You’re really serious.”

“I really am.”

“Then... then okay. If the offer’s still open, then I’ll take it.”

Danneel lets out a deep breath. She didn’t realize she was holding it. She reaches across the car and takes Jensen’s hand. As she curls her fingers around his, his breath gets shakier.

“It’ll be okay,” Danneel promises. “We’ll make it be okay.”


	2. Chapter 2

Danneel gives Jensen another couple of days to kick the lingering remains of his cold, which also gives him time to make himself at home in the guest bedroom. It turns out to be pretty fortunate - if also dead depressing, though Danneel keeps that thought to herself - that Jensen’s entire life is packed into his temperamental Ford Escort, minus a few boxes of books sent to his parents’ house by media mail.

Sunday afternoon, Danneel peeks in the door. Jensen’s sitting in the chair she stuck in the guest room because it was too ugly and uncomfortable for the living room, though Jensen doesn't seem bothered. His elbows are propped on his knees and his chin is propped on his hands, and his mind is clearly miles away. "Careful, you’ll pull a brain muscle,” Danneel says, sitting down on the bed. It’s now covered with a huge comforter in the colors and pattern of what she’s guessing is some sports team. Her quilted comforter from Target is neatly folded in the corner.

Jensen blinks, and then he straightens up and gives her the beginnings of a smile.

“It’s looking good,” Danneel says, glancing around the room. What books he had with him take up half a bookcase shelf, which looks a little sad, but he has framed photographs scattered around, too, and the table in the corner now seems to be fully supplied: lamp, paperclips and rubber bands, a jar of pens and pencils, a stapler. His laptop sits square in the center.

All in all, it’s not the coziest nor the homiest bedroom she’s ever seen, but at least it looks personalized. It says: someone lives here now.

“Thanks,” Jensen says. “I didn’t bring a lot of stuff with me. Most of it was joint owned.” He glances at her sidelong, maybe to see if she’s going to make something out of that statement. She holds her tongue, and he relaxes a little. “Listen, I was wondering, is it all right if I put a couple of nails in the wall? I have some things I’d like to hang up, if it’s okay.”

Danneel shrugs. “It’s your room.” She can plaster over and repaint later if she needs to, not that she expects Jensen to do nearly that much damage.

It must have been the right thing to say; Jensen’s face lights up a little.

“So, work tomorrow?” she asks.

“Yeah, definitely.”

“How are you with early mornings, by the way?” Generally this is the sort of thing Danneel asks _before_ she hires a person. Oh, well.

Jensen scrubs at his hair. “It’s not my most civil time of day, but I can fake it.”

“Yeah?” Danneel asks, amused.

“I mean, usually faking it involves coffee, which I’m not really drinking right now, because, you know. Baby.” The glance he shoots Danneel suggests that maybe she’ll choose _now_ to be shocked by his impending fatherhood. “But seriously, I’ll manage.”

“I wasn’t actually concerned. Downstairs by five-thirty?”

Danneel thinks Jensen pales just a little, but that might be her imagination. “Five-thirty,” he agrees.

\--

Civility isn’t the problem, it turns out. It’s more a question of consciousness, which Jensen largely lacks at five-thirty in the morning. He’s clearly making an effort; the eyes are open, but the gears aren’t turning yet. Fortunately, opening the café mostly doesn’t take a lot of brain power. Given a push in the right direction, Jensen can unbox pastries just fine while Danneel gets the milk, cream cheeses, and omelette ingredients out of the cooler and preps the till. The coffee urn is a crotchety beast, and she saves it for last. Her first encounter of the day always requires a few good seconds of glare. Coffee is clearly a necessity on the breakfast café menu, but it’s a rare morning that she doesn’t wonder why everyone can’t just drink tea.

“Here,” Jensen says. Danneel startles; she didn’t realize he was anywhere near her. His eyes still only look about half-open. He sort of shoulders her aside, squints at the urn, and then turns to the grinder. “These for the drip coffee?” he asks, pointing to a canister of beans.

“Ye-es,” Danneel says.

Jensen asks how much she usually grinds to start, which she tells him, and when he asks where the filters are, she points him to them. In not much more time than it’d have taken her, he has a test drip swirling around in the bottom of a paper cup. He takes a sip, swallows, and contemplates for a bit. “Passable,” he says, and hands her the cup.

Danneel sips and makes a face; it tastes like coffee. She narrows her eyes at Jensen. “You ‘did a stint’ at Starbucks?”

“For two years. During college.”

“Uh huh.” She slaps him on the shoulder. “Congratulations, you’ve just been promoted to chief coffee honcho.”

Jensen blinks muzzily. “Cool.”

He’s already shaping up to be the best hire Danneel’s made in years.

The rest of Monday goes by in a blur. Once he’s awake, Jensen is readily trainable. By mid-morning he seems to know the espresso machine backwards and forwards and is, from the sounds the customers are making, getting better coffee out of it than Danneel ever has. Not that she can really tell the difference, which possibly explains a lot all by itself.

She gets a lot of questions about her new employee, some less polite than others. She knows from memory which of her regulars are alphas or omegas, but if she were in doubt she’d know it by the way they scent the air as they get near the counter. She wonders if Jensen’s far enough along that they can smell _that_ about him as well. She should ask him.

Jensen’s still wiping down tables when Danneel finishes closing out the till. She sits at a table one down from him and says, “Good job today.”

He laughs a little. “I feel like I’ve taken about five steps back. Never expected to be working food service again.”

“I like it.”

Jensen is instantly apologetic. “I didn’t mean...”

Danneel waves away his explanation. “I get it. Most people do this kind of work because they can’t get anything else.”

“And you?”

She gives him a long look. She has a canned explanation for why she’s spending her prime years serving people the soup of the day. It has to do with Bertie taking care of Danneel after her mom’s death, paying Danneel’s way through school. Danneel returns the favor by keeping the old café going. Grief, gratitude: it’s a true story, as far as it goes. 

Instead, she says, “It feels like home. This place.” She sweeps the whole café with a gesture. Bertie renovated it the year Danneel graduated from high school – which was probably the point at which Bertie realized it’d be a going concern for a good while longer – but beneath the new chrome and paint Danneel can still feel the deep-down brick bones of the place, as solid as always. Solider than anything else in her life, really.

She catches Jensen looking at her, just waiting, and adds, “And I like taking care of people.”

“I noticed,” Jensen says. He’s giving her this look, secret and knowing and a little admiring, that makes her flush.

She turns hurriedly towards the window. “Anyway, that’s why. Home and hot soup.”

“Sounds reasonable to me.”

Maybe the fact that he doesn’t seem to need any more explanation is the reason she keeps going. “Besides, there isn’t anything else I’d rather be doing.” She glances over at Jensen to see how he’s taking this. He doesn’t look particularly concerned by her profound lack of ambition. Encouraged, she continues, “I feel like there should be, you know? I was supposed to be the small-town girl who made good. Went to the big city, graduated from college...” She shrugs. “And now I’m back where I started.”

Jensen ducks his head. “I can’t really say I’m sorry about that. Considering.”

“Fair enough.” Danneel laughs and shakes off her mood. “Listen, some friends of mine asked me over for dinner tomorrow night. I was wondering if you’d want to come.”

“To dinner?” Furrows appear on Jensen’s forehead. “With your friends? They’re not going to want some random guy crashing in on them.”

“Don’t worry, their house is basically social central. They’d love to meet you.” Jensen looks terrifically unconvinced by this. Danneel adds, “Look, once Gen finds about my new roommate/employee situation, there’s going to be no stopping her giving you the third degree. Might as well get it over with.”

“Is that supposed to make me feel better?” Despite the joking tone, he looks worried. Scared, even. Danneel didn’t anticipate that.

“Never mind. You definitely don’t have to come unless you want to. I just thought maybe you’d like some company besides mine.”

Jensen stopped working a while back. Now he picks up his rag and starts rubbing at sticky spots again. “Are they nice?”

“Gen’s basically my best friend for life, and Jared’s pretty cool. You’ll probably like him. Everyone does. He had their first kid about two years ago, so maybe you guys can bond over, you know.” She flaps her hand. Bond over _what_ , Danneel? Morning sickness? Not being able to eat shellfish for nine months?

Dumb idea or not, she has Jensen’s attention now. “He’s an omega?”

“Yeah.” Danneel considers Jensen, head still bowed over the table he’s cleaning, hand motionless. “Does that mean you’ll go?”

It takes him a moment, but finally he nods. “Yeah, okay. I’ll go.”

\--

The next day, Danneel thinks maybe she should take back her complacence about civility. The morning starts out well enough. Jensen doesn’t have a lot to say, but then Danneel suspects that he very rarely does at this hour of the day. By mid-morning, though, his responses to her have gone from brief to brusque. He never snaps at her as she shows him new things on the register or explains the sacred arcana of cream of celery soup, but she suspects it’s a near thing.

When he takes his lunch, she leaves the counter in Aaron’s hands for two minutes and follows Jensen to the tiny office in the back that doubles as a break room. She leans up against the doorframe and says, “Something on your mind?”

Jensen looks up from his soup and breadstick – a little guiltily, Danneel thinks. “No?”

“You seem on edge,” she says.

He turns away from her and peers down into his bowl. “I’m fine.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

Danneel shrugs. If he doesn’t want to talk, it’s not her job to make him. She leaves him to his soup and heads back to relieve Aaron at the register. 

Things are marginally better after that. Jensen has apparently decided to get through the rest of the day by saying as little as possible, but Danneel doesn’t let it bother her. She’s had days like that, too. As long as he’s polite to the customers, they’ll manage.

After Danneel shoos out the last hanger-on and closes the door, she goes to inspect Jensen’s prep for the next day’s coffee. He’s so focused on scrubbing out the coffee urn that he startles when she leans into view. "Looks good,” Danneel says. She has to maintain some pretense of expertise, after all, even if she’s giddy with the thought of permanently handing off urn duties.

“Thanks.”

“So we’re supposed to head over to Gen and Jared’s around five.”

He nods, a little stiffly. “Right.”

Danneel frowns. “Assuming you still want to.”

“No, I want to.”

Danneel doesn’t hear any hesitation in that answer, but she hears plenty of tension, and pieces began to snap into place. “You’ll like them,” she promises again.

Jensen’s chuckle is bitter. “That’s not really the question, though, is it?” He’s still buried in the urn up to his elbows, but to Danneel’s searching eye, the set of his shoulders looks like defeat.

“Jensen...” she begins, unsure of what she’s going to say.

“God, I’m sorry.” Jensen straightens to his full height and looks down on her, apologetic. “I’m just whining. Don’t listen to me.”

“They’ll like you, too,” she says. “They’re my friends. They have good taste.”

Jensen flashes her a wan smile. “Thanks.”

Danneel gives herself a mental shake. _This isn’t a problem you can fix, Danneel._ At least not right now. “We leave around five,” she repeats, and Jensen nods.

\--

It’s the worst kind of winter day. A gray veil of cloud lets in neither sun nor snow, the dirty gray slush is frozen in the streets, and a thin, icy wind sluices through all Danneel’s layers and makes her nose run. Definitely time to break out the wool coat, she decides. “It’s going to be bad one this year,” she tells Jensen as they pick their way across the street to Danneel’s car. “All this and it’s barely December.”

“Yeah.” Jensen takes a long step over a frozen puddle.

The ride is quiet. Jensen’s shoulders are stiff, and his gaze is fixed resolutely out the window. Danneel wonders again what possessed him to agree to come, given how anxious he obviously is. Halfway across town, he asks, “So what did you tell them about me? Your friends?”

Danneel shoots a glance in his direction. He looks and sounds fairly unconcerned. She doesn’t believe it for a minute. “I told them you were going through a rough patch, and I’d offered you a job and a place to stay for a while.”

“And about...”

Danneel waits. There are a lot of ways that sentence could go.

“About me being pregnant?”

“No. I figured you could mention it if you wanted.” Not that it’s going to be a secret much longer either way. Jensen nods, and Danneel can’t tell whether or not he liked her answer.

They pull into the driveway of Jared and Gen’s cute little starter home in its cute little starter-home neighborhood. “Watch out for ice,” Danneel warns, but once she gets out it’s obvious Jared’s been out with the shovel and salt; the sidewalk is clear.

Before Danneel even gets a chance to knock – not that she wouldn’t have walked right in, anyway; the knock is just a formality – the door’s thrown wide open, and Jared’s standing behind it. “Danneel!” He barely contains himself until she and Jensen are both inside. As soon as the door is closed, the ground falls away beneath her as he lifts her into a bear hug. She hugs him back; it’s not like Jared leaves a person a lot of options.

When he’s set her back down, he does _not_ hug Jensen, possibly because today is not one of Jared’s days for hugging people on first acquaintance, or possibly because he notices how very wide Jensen’s eyes are. Instead, Jared sticks his hand out. “Great to meet you. Jared.”

Tentatively, Jensen shakes the hand. “Jensen.”

Jared grins and starts herding them towards the kitchen. “Hey, Jensen,” Gen says, waving a wooden spoon in his direction. “I’m Gen.”

“Nice to meet you.”

Gen turns to Jared. “Honey, are you going to check these enchiladas or what?”

“Right! Right.” Jared hustles over to the oven.

Danneel leans over and whispers, “Jared’s pretty great at Mexican, as long as he doesn’t get distracted.”

“Which hardly ever happens, right?” Jensen asks. His eyes crinkle with humor.

Danneel laughs. “Exactly.”

“So Jensen, no fish, like Danneel said,” Jared calls. He shuts the over door and turns around, looking satisfied. “Are you allergic? I have the peanut thing, and it sucks, man.”

Danneel watches Jensen carefully. She told Gen no fish because when Danneel made herself a tuna sandwich a few nights ago, Jensen nearly puked from the smell alone. It was the last holdover from his morning sickness, he said. “Not allergic,” Jensen says.

“Are you telling me you just don’t like fish? I bet you’re one of those haters about sardines on pizza, too.”

Jensen pales a little bit, which Danneel considers totally fair. Jared’s love affair with sardine pizza is and will always be gross. “No,” Jensen says slowly. He glances at Danneel – for support, maybe – and she shrugs. “No, it’s just, I’m pregnant. Fish makes me nauseous right now.”

One moment it seems like the whole kitchen is still, which is probably just a sign of Danneel’s anxiety, for Jensen’s sake. The next, Jared’s whole face lights up. “Dude, seriously?”

“Yes?”

“That’s awesome. You have no idea. This is not that big of a town, and there aren’t a lot of male omegas running around in it. When I was pregnant, I’d go down to the sports bar and it’d totally weird everyone out. Which was fun, too, no lie, but sometimes a guy wants to talk stretch marks and March Madness in the same conversation, you know?”

“Not really,” Jensen says. He looks a little dazed, but that’s a common reaction to Jared. More importantly, he’s starting to relax. Danneel hadn’t realized until now quite how tense he was.

The conversation takes a pause while Jared pulls the enchiladas out of the oven and Gen sets out the sour cream and guacamole and olives. For a while everything’s quiet. Jared must not have been distracted too often tonight, because the enchiladas are top-notch. Or possibly Danneel’s just excited about something that isn’t soup.

“So how far along are you?” Jared asks.

Jensen pauses mid-chew. After he swallows, he says, “Twenty-two weeks.”

“Seriously? Man, you don’t look it.” Danneel’s surprised, too. She and Jensen haven’t talked details, but she figured if Jensen wasn’t showing, he couldn’t be very far along.

“It’s, um.” Jensen looks down at his enchilada. “It’s all the layers.”

Jared laughs. “Good plan,” he says. “You gotta keep pretending as long as possible. Once you get a real belly, it’s a 24/7 gropefest.”

“Yeah?” Jensen asks faintly.

“Little old ladies are the worst. Talk about handsy.”

Gen rolls her eyes. “Whatever. You loved the attention.”

“You really did,” Danneel agrees.

“Y’all have no sympathy for my pain,” Jared grumbles. Turning to Jensen, he adds, “You should come meet the miniature after dinner. Since you’re going to have one of your own. This is your first, right?”

“Uh, yeah. It’s my first.”

“Great.” Clearly satisfied with this plan, Jared goes back to working on his truly impressive pile of enchiladas. Jensen sneaks Danneel a look, and she gives him an encouraging smile. To her pleased surprise, he smiles back.

\--

The dinner chatter drifts to inconsequential things. Jared moans about his stack of grading. “First-year history essays are the _worst_. They’re like these big ugly open sores on the landscape of free thought. Open, pussing sores oozing drivel—”

“Jared,” Gen interrupts. “We’re eating.”

“They’re really bad,” Jared finishes sheepishly.

Gen asks how Jensen’s settling in at the café. He’s doing fine, he says. Before Gen can launch into a much more detailed analysis of ‘fine,’ Danneel says, “He’s already better at coffee than me.”

Gen rolls her eyes. “Oscar the Grouch would be better at coffee than you.”

Jensen snorts, then tries to cover it with a cough.

“Traitor,” Danneel mutters. Jensen coughs again. Danneel very pointedly ignores Gen’s smirk. She’s felt Gen’s eyes on her, all through the meal; Jensen’s the guest of honor, so Gen’s being gentle with him. Danneel expects no such mercy for herself.

Eventually the plates are scraped clean. “Danneel and I can clean up,” Gen says. “You boys go play with Celia.”

“No, I can help,” Jensen says.

“Leave it, man,” Jared says, rising. “Next time I’ll have you pushing a broom before you know it. Come on, I want you to meet my little girl.”

“Uh, okay.” Jensen gets up and follows Jared, throwing Danneel a glance over his shoulder.

“He’ll be fine,” Gen says. “Jared’s the nice one, remember.”

“I’m not worried,” Danneel says. The person Jared can’t eventually set at ease is a person with more fundamental problems than she thinks Jensen’s suffering from.

Gen begins collecting glasses in her arms. “So, how _is_ he working out, really?”

Danneel gathers dirty plates. “Good. So far he’s really easy to live with.” Jensen’s plate is scraped clean. Either he liked his enchiladas very much, he was very hungry, or he was working very hard to be polite. 

Gen nods sagely. “Easy on the eyes, especially.”

Danneel laughs and puts the last plate on the stack. “Yeah, he’s pretty cute.”

“Can you even imagine how hot he’s going to be once he really starts showing? _Mm_.”

“Okay, no, the belly fetish is strictly a you thing. Just because _you_ perved on _Jared_ ’s for five months straight—”

“Give it a month,” Gen says sagely. “You’ll see.” 

Danneel rolls her eyes. 

“Danneel,” Gen begins, her tone suddenly serious. Danneel holds in a sigh. She’s heard that tone enough in the last ten years, from enough different people, to know what it means. “He’s going to break your heart, you know.”

Okay, maybe not. “What?”

Gen’s expression is infuriatingly kind. Kindness is a bad sign with Gen; she only falls back on it in the most dire of circumstances. “He’s a hot, sweet guy in need, probably without a single alpha impulse in his body. Tell me that that isn’t exactly your type.”

Danneel dumps her collected silverware loudly into the sink. “He’s an omega, Gen.”

“That’s what I’m worried about.” Gen joins Danneel at the sink and folds her arms firmly across her chest. “He’s your type, and chances are pretty low that you’re his.”

“Familiarity breeds contempt,” Danneel says. “I can work up some contempt within a month or two, don’t you think? Also, baby. Pretty sure my _type_ doesn’t come with kids pre-ordered.”

Gen chews on her lip. “But it’s temporary, right? This thing. You’ll bandage his wounds, and once the bleeding stops he’ll go on to wherever he’s going.”

“That’s the plan,” Danneel says firmly. Very firmly.

Gen scowls. “You know if he does anything to hurt you, even you won’t be able to patch him up after I’m done with him.”

“I know.” Danneel bumps hips with Gen, and when that doesn’t work, she just keeps crowding up against her until Gen finally cracks a grin and shoves her away. 

When the table is cleared, the leftovers put away, the dishwasher running, and the casserole dishes drip-drying on a towel, Gen turns to Danneel and says, “They’ve been gone a long time.” Danneel agrees that it has indeed been a while since the land of omega bonding has been heard from. “We should go check on them,” Gen says. “They might be in trouble.”

“Celia might have executed her plan for world domination?”

“It’s the eyes. Jared’s eyes in that wittle bitty baby face? My child is a hazard to public health.”

“We’d better check,” Danneel agrees.

They tiptoe down the hall, following the low murmurs to the nursery. The door’s open, and the baby gate is in position at the bottom of it. Slowly, Gen peeks her head around the doorframe. After a beat, she flails at Danneel to join her. Jared’s leaned up against the wall next to the crib, the motions of his hands voluble and full of meaning despite his low tone. Jensen may or may not be listing; he’s in Jared’s rocking chair, cradling a sleeping Celia in his lap, and he’s gazing down at her with rapt attention.

Danneel thinks her heart might have turned over in her chest. She can’t bear to interrupt this. After a few moments, she backs away again and pulls Gen with her, and they tiptoe back to the kitchen and leave the omegas and baby to their communion.

\--

Eventually Jared and Jensen wander back out. Jared’s at full volume by the time they arrive in the kitchen. “Seriously, yeah, just check with the slave driver—” Jared winks at Danneel. “—and give me a call.”

“Cool,” Jensen says. He looks as though he really thinks it might be, whatever _it_ is.

They bundle into their coats again, and Danneel gets another gravity-defying hug from Jared and a quicker, tighter one from Gen. Jensen is still not quite to the hug stage with Jared, but Jared palms his shoulder warmly, and there’s more in Jensen’s answering smile than just politeness.

Once they’re in the car, with the doors closed and the heater on full blast, Danneel says, “So that was okay?”

“Yeah.” There’s something in Jensen’s tone that Danneel can’t read. She glances over, and sees him looking pensively down. His hands are clasped over his belly, and for the first time, she can _see_ it, like one of those Magic Eye things where you can see the zebra if you just cross your eyes the right way.

Jensen catches her looking at him, and she flushes, although probably it’s too dark in the car for him to notice. Anyway, he doesn’t look upset. “He’s taking me clothes shopping,” he says.

“Oh?”

“Yeah.” Jensen ducks his head. “Nothing, um, nothing really fits anymore, except for these sweatshirts I stole.”

Danneel’s eyebrows rise. “Oh, yeah?”

“I figured they was the least Todd could do for me.”

Danneel would laugh, but there’s no trace of humor in Jensen’s tone. “Gotcha.”

“Anyway, Jared knows a place in Centerville that has a good line of male maternity wear, and he says he’ll take me.”

“Cool,” Danneel says, very non-committal, because her true enthusiasm for this turn of events would probably alarm him.

This was good, she thinks. This was a very, very good idea.

\--

Two nights later, Danneel wakes up to the hitching, muffled sound of someone sobbing their heart out. She pulls on her bathrobe and goes to knock on Jensen’s bedroom door. The sound is clearer now, each strangled gasp for breath, each sad exhale cut short. “Jensen?” She knocks again. When there’s no answer, she debates with herself for a minute, and finally she pushes the door open. She turns on the bedroom light, and there’s Jensen, huddled in his covers with his eyes clenched shut and streaming tears. Danneel walks over to the bed, sits on the edge of it, and cautiously lays a hand on Jensen’s arm. “Jensen?”

He stiffens, and then the sobbing pauses. His eyes blink open, and then he shuts them again, against the overhead light. “Todd?” he asks.

“It’s Danneel.” 

“Danneel.” There’s another pause, several more convulsive hitches of breath, and then his eyes open again to squint at her.

“Are you okay?”

“Um.” She can hear the tears in his voice when he answers. “Yeah, it’s okay, I’m fine.” His voice breaks on the last word. He pushes himself up a little, facing her directly. “Did I wake you up?”

“Well, yeah, but it looks like I woke you up, too. Do I need to take you to the hospital?”

“What? No. No, I’m fine. I just. Um.” His eyes are bloodshot. “I had a nightmare.”

“Yuck,” Danneel says sympathetically.

She not sure he even hears her. “I... God, I dreamed I lost it.”

“You lost... oh.” Now she notices how his hand is curled protectively over his stomach. “Oh, Jensen.”

“It was... I could feel it.” He stares up at her, as lost as she’s ever seen a person look. He’s crying again, if he ever really stopped. He’s quieter about it now, but tears keep on overflowing his reddened eyes and trickling down his face.

“Hey,” Danneel says. She scoots a little closer. She’s not naturally a huggy person, much less with people she knows as little as she knows Jensen, but she suspects hugs are called for here. “Hey,” she says again. She opens her arms a little, and she must have guessed right because he falls right into them. Whatever sliver of control was holding him together lets go, and he sobs.

She rubs his back and his arms, and shifts every so often to ease the awkwardness of the position. Finally, Jensen sounds less like a person whose heart’s been broken and more like a person who’s crying because they’ve forgotten how to stop. Danneel pulls her arms back and scoots back a little. “I’ll be right back,” she says.

She goes to the kitchen and puts the tea kettle on the burner. Then she steals a spare roll of toilet paper from the bathroom and takes it to Jensen. “Thanks,” he says, hopelessly congested now. “God, I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” she says, smiling in what she hopes is a comforting sort of way. 

“You can, um. You can go back to bed now. I’m fine.”

Instead of telling Jensen she doesn’t believe him, Danneel says, “I’m going to have some tea, since I’m up. You want some?” She might as well have spoken Tagalog. Jensen just blinks at her. “Okay, well, there’ll be hot water if you want it.” She squeezes his arm, and then she goes out into the hallway and leaves his door slightly ajar behind her. 

She wasn’t at all sure Jensen would come, but a few minutes later he shuffles out in pajama bottoms and a fleece jacket. Danneel sits him on the couch and gives him an afghan to wrap up in, and then she brings in the tea: peppermint for him, vanilla white for her. She settles onto the couch and closes her eyes, savoring the heat of the tea mug in her hands.

Jensen takes a sip and says, “Seems like you think tea fixes everything.”

“Tea and soup,” Danneel agrees. “They’re like money – they can’t buy happiness, but they do make it a lot easier to get.”

Jensen laughs out loud: a clogged, stifled sound, but genuine nonetheless. He blows on his tea, and Danneel leans back and sips hers. Inside the apartment, there’s no sound but their breathing; outside, the streets are silent, frozen, untraveled, the windows in the other buildings all dark. This time of night belongs solely to those awake to see it, to hear the wind blowing shrilly through bare-branched trees.

Tomorrow Danneel will regret the loss of sleep, but not until then, when she’s forgotten again the intimate, enclosing silence of a black winter’s night.

“I swear I’m not usually this much of a basket case.” Danneel looks over at Jensen, and he casts her an embarrassed glance. “It’s gotta be the hormones,” he says. “God, it’s humiliating.”

“It’s okay.”

He huffs. “Thanks.”

“Do you get a lot of bad dreams? That’s a pregnancy thing, too, isn’t it?”

“I guess. I don’t get them that often. Last time I did, it was pretty bad – like tonight. Freaked Todd the hell out. He slept on the couch for like a week.”

“Your...” Alpha is clearly the wrong word in this context. Danneel casts around and lands on the beta equivalent to what this person seems to have been to Jensen. “Your boyfriend slept on the couch to get away from your nightmares?”

“He’s not as bad as he sounds,” Jensen says – somewhat reluctantly, Danneel thinks. 

“I have to say, nothing you’ve said has endeared him to me.”

Jensen casts her a wry smile and shrugs. They sit quietly for a few moments, and then Jensen says, “I don’t know what I’d do.” Danneel blinks and sits up a little straighter. Jensen stares down into his tea, the level of which has dropped significantly. “If I lost it,” he adds. 

That’s enough to jog Danneel’s morning-sluggish memory. “It was a dream,” she says.

“I always wanted it,” he says. “I’m the omega stereotype, I guess, but I’ve always wanted kids. I’d been bugging Todd about it for a couple of years. Put on the cuffs, start a family.”

Danneel grabs the other afghan from the end of the couch and pulls it into her lap. Gently, she prods, “Yeah?” 

“Yeah. And then I don’t know what happened. My heats are a little irregular sometimes, and I guess this one was early and we didn’t know. Didn’t bother with a condom.” Jensen huffs softly. “When I found out, Todd said I did it on purpose.”

“But you didn’t.”

“God, no. But once I knew, I couldn’t, there was no way I could get rid of it. Todd wanted me to. He said it was my fault, I had to fix my mess—”

In her mind, Danneel digs Todd’s grave a little deeper.

“—but I couldn’t do it.” Jensen looks up, meets her head-on, and his eyes plead with her to understand.

“Jensen, in my biased opinion, your boyfriend was a schmuck. It’s your baby, and you want it, and you’re doing what you have to do to take care of it. I don’t see how anyone could call that a bad thing.”

Jensen stares at her, searching her face for who knows what – insincerity? A punch line? But eventually he relaxes a little. “Thanks.”

“No problem.”

Jensen rolls his eyes. “You’re too nice to be real, you know that?”

She reaches over and gives his hand a squeeze. “You’re easy to be nice to.”

He huffs, smiling softly. “Thanks. For the tea, and the listening ear, and everything.”

“You’re welcome,” Danneel says. It occurs to her that now might be a safe time to ask some of the things she’s been careful not to ask before, innocuous though they were, in case they sent Jensen back into his turtle shell. “So, do you know what it is yet? Boy, girl, alpha or beta...?”

Jensen shakes his head. “I mean, I’ve had ultrasounds, and last time the technician said she saw something between its legs.”

“So probably a boy.”

“Probably.”

“Do you have a lot of female alphas in your family?”

“No,” Jensen says ruefully. “We don’t have hardly anyone cross-sex at all, not even any betas. We’re alpha men and omega women, all across the board. I’m the only male omega we know of for like three generations. You can imagine how thrilled my dad was about that.”

For the sake of her calm, Danneel decides not to speculate.

“I could find out for sure what sex it is, if I got an amnio, but there’s risks to that. Not big risks, but you know, I figure this kid’s got enough odds against it already.”

Danneel nods.

“I could show you the ultrasound, though.”

“Yeah?”

“Do you want to see?” His eyes light with a fragile excitement.

Even if she didn’t want to, which she does, there’s no way Danneel could have denied him. “Sure.”

Jensen grins, and he’s just, he’s so beautiful when he gets out from under his usual gray weariness that Danneel doesn’t really know what to do with herself. Fortunately, Jensen pushes up off the couch and heads down the hall, and so Danneel doesn’t need to do anything. Pretty soon he’s back with an envelope in hand. He sits back down on the couch and hands over the envelope. 

Inside is one of those grainy, black-and-white images like some kind of Rorschach test. Danneel’s familiar with them; Jared and Gen kept her thoroughly updated on Celia’s progress before she was born. It doesn’t mean Danneel’s gotten any better at interpreting ultrasounds, though.

Jensen saves her the trouble. Pointing, he says, “See, there’s the head, and that curve there is the spine, and you can sort of see a hand there.”

“Okay,” Danneel says. “Gotcha.”

“Yeah.” He grins at her. “Yeah, that’s my kid.” His hand closes around his stomach, and he takes a deep breath.

It’s going to be okay. Jensen and his baby, they’re going to be okay. Danneel’s going to do her damndest to make it so.


	3. Chapter 3

Sunday afternoon, Jared swings by to pick up Jensen for what will be, Jared assures Danneel, a very manly shopping trip. Jensen looks skeptical of this description, but also pleased. Danneel sends them on their way with a travel mug of tea each. Jared squints skeptically at his, but even he, coffee addict that he is, can’t deny that he’s genuinely liked a couple of things she’s made him try. She plans to keep at it until she finds the magic blend to fully convert him.

She putters around the apartment while Jensen's gone. She gives the place a good vacuuming and mopping and scrub down; she does laundry; she curls up in the armchair with her last library book, a young adult fantasy that Aaron insisted she’d like. The apartment is very quiet, with Jensen gone. She never noticed before. It’s not like he makes a ruckus when he’s around; he’s by far the least conspicuous roommate she’s ever had. Still, he’s _present_ in a way that makes her notice the lack of him now.

Maybe once he moves out, she should get a cat.

She’s starting to think about bed when Jensen gets back. He’s calling out the door to Jared as he comes in, hands full of shopping bags and a smoothie cup from Traci’s. When he’s fully inside, door closed, Danneel asks, “Success?”

Jensen glances down at the bags like he’s forgotten he was holding them. “Yeah. Jared helped me find some stuff that will, you know, fit.”

“Score.”

“Yeah.” He’s smiling a private little smile. He heads to his room without another word, and that’s okay, because Danneel doesn’t have to ask if he had fun. God bless Jared.

A while later he comes back out and sits down at the other end of the couch, sucking down the remains of his smoothie. Danneel looks over, and he pulls the straw out of his mouth. “So I was thinking,” he says. “You said you had a friend who was a midwife?”

“Julie.”

“Yeah. You think you could hook me up with her?”

“Sure, I can do that,” Danneel says, carefully neutral. “I don’t know whether she’s still taking patients for, you know, when you’re due.”

“If I'm here for good, then I have to start somewhere."

Danneel eyes him carefully. “Yeah?”

He nods firmly at his knees. “Yeah.”

Danneel finds herself fighting her own private grin. “Cool.”

\--

During a lull the next day, while Aaron’s on his ten-minute break, Danneel turns from the cash register and comments, “Christmas soon." Jensen shoots her a glance and continues to measure out coffee beans. “Did you have any plans? A visit home, or...?” As she asks the question, Danneel realizes what it implies: that Jensen is _here_ now. His bedroom upstairs isn’t a vacationing spot, a place he’s visiting; it’s a place he can visit _from_. It settles something in her mind. Soon, Jensen will take his little economy car and his baby somewhere more permanent than her apartment, but not yet. 

If any of this occurs to Jensen, he doesn’t say so. “Not really,” he replies.

There’s an odd note in his voice. Danneel takes a wild stab at the source of it. “You don’t need to go anywhere unless you want, obviously. I’ll be here. Probably Bertie and I’ll have Christmas dinner with Jared and Genevieve. They’ve been giving shelter to my poor orphan self for years. Probably some of Jared’s students will come, too. From the college.”

Jensen listens through all this, and when Danneel finishes he nods. “Yeah, maybe,” he says.

“You’ve got time,” Danneel says. “Anyway, what I really care about right now is sprucing up the café. We can get Misha over to do art for the windows—”

“Misha?”

“He runs the _alternative_ alternative bookstore,” she says. “You might have seen him around. Can’t be parted from his beret?”

“I... don’t think so.” 

“You’d know if you met him. Misha isn’t someone you forget. Anyway, that takes care of windows, but I’ll need to drag the Christmas boxes out to take care of the rest.” Danneel makes a face. “How do you feel about interior design?”

Jensen chuckles. “You don’t like coffee or holiday décor. How is it you run a small-town café, again?” Danneel glances over, ready to return the insult with interest, but Jensen’s grinning at her. The sight of it washes out whatever she was going to say.

“Soup,” she says instead. “I’m really awesome at soup. And omelettes.”

“I won’t argue with that,” Jensen says, still smiling.

The implied praise warms Danneel more than it should. To cover, she adds, “I’m not terrified of bookkeeping, either.” 

“A key ingredient,” Jensen agrees. 

\--

Danneel schedules Misha to come in one afternoon, and while he’s getting out paints and brushes, Danneel and Jensen lug the boxes of lights and fake evergreens out of the storage room. They untangle the lights and Danneel tasks Jensen with hanging them while she sets out the snowmen salt-and-pepper shakers and the holly-leaf napkin holders.

By the time he finishes, she’s sprucing up the counter. He sidles up next to her and drops his voice. “What’s he painting?”

Danneel glances over to Misha, clearly concentrating deeply. She takes a moment to consider the paint already applied to the window and says, “I have no idea.”

“What did you ask him to paint?”

“I’m getting a genuine Misha original on my windows. You don’t cramp that kind of genius by making requests.”

“Ah.” Jensen nods sagely, and Danneel laughs. Leaning in closer, he confesses, “I think maybe he was hitting on me.”

“He does that.”

“But I’m an omega.”

Suddenly, Danneel is very aware of her pulse thudding in her ears. She chooses her words carefully. “Misha’s not particular about smell. Beta, remember? Any guy-shaped person will do.”

Jensen snorts. “I’m not exactly standard guy shape, though, am I?” He palms his belly. It’s a lot more obvious now than it was when he got here, although Danneel isn’t sure how much of that is growth and how much is the fit of his new clothes.

“That’s not really the point. You’re still equipped in all the important ways, right?” Then she flushes, sharp and hot. For one thing, rude, and for another, not necessarily true. Not for an omega. “Anyway,” she hastens, “it’s not about equipment. It’s about general, you know...” She gestures vaguely up and down him. 

“Masculinity?” he offers, half disbelieving.

“Sure. At least...” She girds her loins and charges ahead. “At least, that’s how it is for me.” That gets his attention. That hint of mockery from a moment ago is gone now. He gives her a long, uncertain look, and she looks straight back. Then Misha calls her over with a question. And that’s good, because that was definitely as close as she’s coming today to _You’re hot like the sun, with or without baby bump._

\--

Danneel closes up shop on the afternoon of December twenty-third. She cashes out the till while Jensen wipes down tables, and together they put the cooler in order for opening the day after Christmas. “We field a lot of bargain shoppers,” she tells him. “They come in to cackle over their booty and tend to their wounds.”

“With soup?”

“With soup.”

When everything’s cleaned and tidied, they hang their aprons up. Danneel closes the door behind them and they climb the stairs. “So,” she says. “Two whole days off. What are you going to do with yourself?”

He snorts. “Sleep, I guess.”

“That sounds like fun,” Danneel agrees. Jensen makes a skeptical noise behind her. “I’m serious. Sleep is important.”

“Yeah, well. I feel like it’s all I ever do anymore. It’s this one’s fault.” Danneel doesn’t have to look to know what he’s glaring at.

“We’ll find you something to do while you’re awake,” Danneel promises, and then remembers that possibly Jensen does not need her to order _every_ aspect of his existence. “I mean, if you want. If you’re looking for something. If you don’t mind hanging out with me and mine, _again_...”

He laughs at her, which finally, mercifully shuts her up. “What did you have in mind?” he asks.

Danneel pushes open the door to the apartment. “Well, in my family, Christmas vacation is for jigsaw puzzles.”

Jensen considers this musingly. “I like puzzles.”

“I have a five thousand piece Angkor Wat that I’ve never worked.”

“Bring it.”

\--

Jensen likes puzzles less, it turns out, when he has to hunch over them in Danneel’s crappy dining chairs while six months pregnant. Instead she moves a card table to the living room, and she works there while he lounges on the couch, supported by a lot of pillows. He’s reading poetry. She knew he had a lot of lit books left over from his college days, all in a tidy, forlorn row on the shelf in his room. This is the first time she’s seen him read out of them.

Every so often he’ll read bits to her. He must notice that she’s not getting the full effect, because he eventually switches styles. Even she can tell the difference. The others he read didn’t have this rollicking rocking-horse cadence, and they definitely did not have titles like _The Cremation of Sam McGee._

“I like that one,” she tells him, after the burning corpse sits up and declares its general satisfaction with its surroundings.

“You have bloodthirsty taste in poetry.”

“I think I have _obvious_ taste in poetry,” she confesses.

“Nothing wrong with knowing what you like,” Jensen says staunchly. “What I like got me a long-term temp job proofing magazine articles, which is about as stable and profitable as it sounds.” Danneel grimaces sympathetically, and Jensen adds, “What did you major in?”

“Business. I know, most uninspired major ever. But like I said before, all I wanted was to come back and run the shop.”

“Like _I_ said, nothing wrong with knowing what you like.”

Danneel shoots him glance. “Thanks.”

He shrugs – no big deal, ma’am. Danneel turns back to her hunt for sky pieces, and she’s almost forgotten he’s there when he clears his throat. “So,” he begins, and pauses. Danneel turns to look. There’s something ominous about that single word. “So,” he says again, “listen, I was thinking I should get my own place soon.”

Danneel feels like she’s just fallen through a trap door. She’s Alice, in that first headlong tumble down the rabbit hole. “Oh?” she manages to say.

“Yeah.” Jensen’s staring at his knees. “You never signed up to let your spare room out to a newborn, and anyway there’s not a lot of space in there for him and me both.”

“Right,” she agrees shakily, because those are unassailable facts. “Do you... have you started looking? Do you have a place?” She doesn’t know why she thought he’d talk to her about this stuff first. It’s not her business. It’s his. She’s just the landlady.

“Actually, you know Jared and Gen have that garage apartment they rent out?”

“Yeah, but isn’t Brock living there?”

“Apparently he’s moving in with his girlfriend.” There’s a faint unease in Jensen’s expression. In a town this small, there’s a whiff of scandal to cohabitation, even between betas. “Anyway, he’s moving out of the apartment right after Christmas, and Jared offered it to me. There’s more room, and it’s disconnected from the main house, so the kid won’t wake everyone up. It’s kind of perfect, actually.”

“It is, isn’t it?” Danneel agrees. Her chest is tight. Stupid chest. It knew this was temporary.

“And anyway, I, uh.” Jensen’s sidelong glance is heavy with guilt. “I didn’t want to impose on you any more than I had to. You’ve been incredible. I have no idea what I would have done, if—”

“You’d have gone home to your parents,” Danneel says firmly, “and you wouldn’t have starved or died of exposure, and something would have worked out.”

“Sure.” Jensen looks unconvinced. “Anyway, thanks.”

Danneel manages a feeble smile. “My pleasure.”

\--

Christmas eve, Danneel luxuriates in her midweek morning off. She sleeps in a whole extra hour, and then she gets up and makes herself Earl Grey – the loose-leaf extra bergamot variety that mysteriously appeared behind the register last week, around the time Misha stopped by – and takes it back to bed. She turns the TV on and channel-surfs until she finds a Rankin-Bass claymation marathon. She burrows deeper under the covers.

An hour later, while Burl Ives is singing “Silver and Gold,” a light knock comes at her door, which she left a little bit ajar. “Come in,” she calls.

Jensen sticks his head inside. “Hey,” he says.

She mutes the TV. “So what are your plans for the day?”

Jensen pushes the rest of the way in the door. A pillow crease has pressed a line into his cheek. He’s wearing flannel pajama bottoms and one of the oversized t-shirts purloined from the evil ex Todd. He’s combing through his bed hair with one hand, which just makes it stick up more, and the other hand rests comfortably, unconsciously on his belly. 

He is, in other words, no more attractive than any other sleepy, bed-mussed guy of Danneel’s acquaintance. That’s her story, and she’s sticking to it. Especially since it’s not a view she’ll get to have for much longer, but she’s not thinking about that.

“Breakfast,” he says, in answer to her question. “A nap. Maybe two.”

“Baby taking a lot out of you?”

“Yeah.” He chuckles sheepishly and rubs at his stomach.

“You should get food and bring it in here to eat,” Danneel says. “The Island of Misfit Toys is coming up soon.”

“Yeah?” Jensen eyes her queen-sized bed, and she scoots over and pats next to her invitingly. “Yeah, okay.”

He wanders out, but eventually he wanders back in with a blanket thrown over his shoulder and a bowl of the instant oatmeal that is his breakfast default when café omelettes aren’t in the offing. It takes all of ten minutes for Danneel to end up snuggled up next to him with her head leaning against his arm. He’s warm and solid, and he’s _comfortable_ in a way that she wouldn’t have expected when she first offered a sniffly, miserable, snow-sodden omega a place to stay. 

Eventually Danneel leaves Jensen dozing quietly on top of her sheets and goes to find her own breakfast. Then she mixes up the ingredients for oatmeal cookies and leaves them to sit for a while, so the oatmeal can soak up the beaten egg.

After checking to see that Jensen is still asleep, she takes the opportunity to wrap his gift, which she’ll be taking over to Gen and Jared’s tomorrow for him to open. There isn’t a lot – a box of baby bottles, because he had a brief but stormy moment the other day panicking over the fact that he hadn’t started collecting baby supplies yet, and the new book from an author he wistfully mentioned liking. Danneel gave them a lot of thought, trying to walk that fine line between too much and too little. The card takes thought, too, before she finally settles on, _You’re in my life, and I’m glad_. Brief and to the point. 

While she’s at it, she wraps the rest of the gifts, too, for Bertie and Gen and Jared and baby Celia. Jensen wanders out as she’s finishing up, rubbing at his eyes. He puts himself to work rolling balls of cookie dough and putting them on the tray. Danneel stirs raisins into the second half, for reasonable people with reasonable palates.

“Jared thinks they’re gross,” she explains to Jensen. “Like little dead mushy things in his cookie, he says.”

Jensen shrugs. “It’s a grape that’s died of heat exhaustion. I can sympathize.”

“What, is this a o-boy thing?”

“Yes,” Jensen agrees solemnly. “Jared and I are a representative and statistically significant sample of male omegas everywhere.”

Danneel flicks a raisin at him.

\--

Jensen declines to make cookie deliveries with Danneel, in favor of another nap. She worries about that a little; maybe they need to talk about cutting back his hours. For now, though, she leaves him drinking his hot chocolate and goes to make her rounds.

The temperature’s hovering in the high twenties, not so close to freezing as to make the roads a danger nor so bitterly cold as to turn Danneel’s breath to ice in her nose. Still, cold. She pulls her scarf a little tighter around her and marches down to the car, across cleared sidewalks that have melted and frozen a couple of times since the last snowfall. There’s more coming, her customers said yesterday. A white Christmas for sure; maybe a snowed-in one. Just as well she’s delivering cookies now.

Not everyone’s home, of course, but she packaged the cookies with that in mind; she leaves them wrapped in sacks on Misha’s and Julie’s front stoops. Lights shine from all the windows of the Williams bachelor pad, though, and when Steven opens the door, two grandchildren peek around his legs and eye Danneel’s Saran-wrapped plate like predators stalking prey. Steven ushers Danneel inside and hands the plate off to a woman Danneel vaguely recognizes as his beta daughter-in-law. Then he turns and wraps Danneel in a hug that lifts her off her feet.

“Merry Christmas, kiddo,” he whispers in her ear.

“Merry Christmas.” Once Danneel has her hands free again, she wipes at her eyes and blames the moisture on the cold. She doesn’t say _Thanks for always being here_ or _I don’t know what Bertie and I would do without you_ or _I love you_ , because those are not the Williams way. Cookies will have to suffice.

Steven is her last delivery stop. She heads for home through the deepening winter afternoon. 

Jensen’s awake when she gets back, although only recently, she judges. He’s at the kitchen table with a book at his elbow, sipping from a cup of her Earl Grey, an activity of which she heartily approves. She’ll convert him yet. “I’m heading to Bertie’s for the evening,” she says. “Do you want to come? She sees his hesitation and adds, “You don’t have to.”

“I think I’ll stay,” he says. “Not that I don’t appreciate the offer...”

“No, it’s fine!” Danneel hastens. “Seriously, no obligation.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not going to intrude on your family time.”

“Jensen.” Danneel slides into the chair opposite and reaches across the table, palm flat against the wood, fingers almost touching his. “You’re not an intrusion. It’s always too quiet with just me and Bertie, and she’s been wanting to meet you for months.” The fact that she hasn’t yet says more about her sensitivity to other people’s need for space than it does any logistical difficulty. Or lack of desire, for that matter. “Anyway, it’s not like we do big family things. It’s pretty much going to be food and TV.”

“I appreciate it,” Jensen says. “I can’t even tell you how much, but.” He stops. Danneel waits, although she isn’t sure there’s any more coming. Finally, Jensen continues, very quietly, “But I think I’m going to call my family.”

Oh.

“You know. Wish them Merry Christmas.”

As far as Danneel knows, his only contact with his family since he moved in with her has been the odd call to his mom, every so often. The calls are always brief, and Jensen’s always a little shaky for a while afterwards. Danneel asks, “Do you want me to stay? Moral support?”

He rolls his eyes, which Danneel takes for a good sign. “I’ll be fine. And Bertie’ll get to meet me tomorrow anyway.”

So Danneel gathers her things and gives him a hug for good luck, and she takes herself down to the car once again and drives the mile and a half to Bertie’s place.

\--

It’s been a couple of weeks since Danneel last dropped by Bertie’s for dinner, though they phone every few days. Danneel lets herself in and goes to find Bertie in the kitchen, as expected. Dinner is simple, soup leftovers and heels of bread; no point in making new meals now when Christmas dinner tomorrow will bring a week’s worth of leftovers.

Bertie tells Danneel about happenings down at the senior center and doesn’t ask about the café, about Aaron or Marta or faithful customer Mr. Budzizewski, and she especially doesn’t ask about Jensen, which Danneel appreciates. 

\--

It’s past Danneel’s usual bedtime when she climbs the stairs again, but a light still shines in the living room window. When she gets inside and closes the door, she finds Jensen on the sofa, wrapped in a blanket with his eyes fixed on the TV.

“Hey,” he says.

“Hey. Tea?”

“Sure.”

Danneel puts the kettle on, and then she comes back to the living room and cuddles into a blanket of her own. “So,” she says. “How did your phone call go?”

He shrugs. She sneaks a toe under his blanket and pokes him with it. He squawks, but then he unblankets long enough to click the TV off with the remote. “Good,” he says. “I think.”

“Yeah?”

“My sister wants to visit,” he says, brow furrowing.

“Is that okay?”

“No, yeah. Yeah. I just... we’re not really close?” He shrugs, and the blanket slips off one shoulder. He’s still wearing the same t-shirt from when he walked into Danneel’s room this morning. She approves. God bless holidays. “It’s not like we fight or anything, but she was enough younger, you know, that we never had a lot in common.”

“Remind me how much younger,” Danneel says. “My grasp of your family structure is a little weak.” This is code for, _I know absolutely nothing._

“Um, eight years. She’s nineteen. She has a winter break at the end of January, and she wants to come stay. I don’t get it, though.”

“Sounds to me like she has good taste.”

Jensen makes a face that Danneel thinks is supposed to convey gratitude. “I don’t know what she’s expecting. I mean, I’m just me, here, pregnant, working food service. There’s not a lot of entertainment value to my life.”

“If I thought your family only wanted you for entertainment value, I would be grumpy.” 

“I guess.” 

Danneel pats Jensen’s knee. He rolls his eyes, but he’s smiling now, faintly, so Danneel calls it a win. “And the rest of your family?”

Jensen’s face closes. “Fine. Wished them happy holidays. You know.” He clears his throat and says, “So, how were things with Bertie?”

Danneel doesn’t fuss about the change in subject. She settles back against the sofa pillows and tells him all Bertie’s latest: the muffins she bakes for the senior center every Saturday, the gardening club she hopes to start in the spring. Jensen keeps on asking questions about this woman he won’t even have met until tomorrow, and he listens to the answers like he has a stake in them.

\--

Danneel wakes late on account of snow having blown into the screen of her window, shading her from the dim, heavily clouded dawn. A peek out the window says she has some hard labor ahead before she and Jensen are going anywhere. She puts on coat and gloves and hat and different pants – ones that don’t have purple sheep on them - and she goes out to clear a path to the car and another path from car to street through the knee-high berm the snowplow left behind. She’s almost made enough space to pull out when she hears the scrape of another shovel behind her.

And yep, there’s Jensen, bundled up as heavily as she, except that his coat doesn’t quite button anymore. He’s clearing more of the sidewalk with her second-best shovel. Danneel hesitates, and then she sticks her shovel in the berm and walks carefully back up the walk. “Are you sure you should be doing that?”

All she can see of Jensen in the gap between hat and scarf is his eyes, his cold-red cheeks, and the top half of his nose. The nose wrinkles. “I’m pregnant,” he says, somewhat muffled. “I’m not _fragile_. And I’m being careful.”

Danneel bites her lip, but it’s not her issue, after all. “Just don’t overdo it. No ER visits this Christmas, ‘kay?”

His eyes roll. “‘Kay.”

When Danneel finishes with the berm, though, she drags Jensen back inside with her. “Or all Bertie’s cinnamon rolls will be gone by the time we get there.”

After showers, when they are both moderately presentable – but only moderately, because nobody they’re going to see is big on formality – Jensen stands in the doorway to his room, tea mug in hand, and watches with bemusement while Danneel collects the last of her items to go down to the car. “I guess it just shows I’m an adult now, right?” she says. “That I overslept on Christmas morning.”

“Mmm.” Jensen takes another sip of tea. “Listen, are you sure I should come?”

Her arms are already full with the second and final load. “What? Yeah. Of course you should come. 

He shrugs. “I could stay here. Watch the Christmas specials. Put some mint syrup in the hot chocolate and call it a party.”

Danneel gently puts her packages back down on the couch and approaches him. “Jensen.”

“I don’t want to intrude.”

“What?” She thought this was a worry long put to rest, but the forlorn misery creeping over Jensen’s face leaves her speechless. On impulse, she slips her mittened hands around his waist and hugs him as tight as she’s able through the obstacles of fluffy coats and his belly. There’s a stiff moment, and then he sets the tea mug on the bookshelf and wraps his arms around her shoulders.

After a few beats, she pulls away. She grabs his hands as they drop. “You already know most of the people,” she reminds him. “There’ll only be a few new faces.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“Of course you don’t have to go if you’re uncomfortable, but I wish you would. Jared’ll miss you, and Gen and Bertie.” He squints at her, uncertain. She squeezes his fingers between hers. “I’d like you to be there. Really.” 

She waits. She’s in no hurry. She holds onto him through a layer of mittens, because she’s not pushing, but she’s not letting him go until he tells her to, either. Finally he ducks his head and says, “Yeah, okay.”

\--

Gen and Jared’s house smells of all that is good: pumpkin pie and roasting turkey and yams baking with marshmallows and fresh-cut fir. Heat blasts from the living room, carrying the metallic scent of a fiercely burning woodstove. 

Danneel’s still shutting the door when Bertie closes in. “Well, hello, young man.” Her bright eyes take in every detail of Jensen, and she grips his hand firmly in her gnarled. “I’m Bertie, and you must be Jensen.”

“That’s me,” he agrees. He seems fully recovered from his anxious spell earlier. “Danneel’s told me a lot about you.”

“As well she ought,” Bertie says, leading him towards the kitchen – to put him to work, Danneel’s certain. “You know that’s my café she runs.”

Danneel shakes her head and goes in search of Gen, who points out the other members of the Christmas party. Five of Jared’s students have joined in the festivities: three from Indonesia, one from California who stayed to work the Christmas rush at the local mall, and a quiet, downcast boy whose presence Jared never gets around to explaining, but who Danneel is pretty sure is local. Altogether, ten adults gather at tables in the Corteses’ dining and living room, plus Celia, ensconced in her high chair like a princess on her throne and lapping up the college students’ avid attention. 

For all Jensen’s earlier concern, he talks to Bertie and Jared and Gen like he belongs here – which he does, if Danneel has anything to say about it. He even chats to the student next to him about the spring semester classes she’s registered for.

When people start going back for seconds and dessert, Jared grabs the seat next to Danneel’s and asks Jensen, “So, you know yet when you want to move in?”

Jensen glances at Danneel, who shrugs. This isn’t her call. Jensen turns to Jared and says, “Weekend after next, maybe? You said Brock’ll be out by then.”

“Should be.”

“Then yeah.” He flashes a grin at Danneel. “Two more weeks, and I’ll be out of your hair.”

“Yep,” Danneel says, and goes for more pumpkin pie.

She takes it and stands next to the doorframe, watching two of the Indonesian students coo at Celia in the living room to her right while to her left the third one is deep in conversation with Gen at the dining table. Who’d have thought Gen would ever find the patience or inclination to have heart-to-hearts with gangly teenagers? It’s Jared rubbing off on her, Danneel’s sure of it.

Suddenly, to her utter shock, Jensen swoops up to her from the living room – wasn’t he in the kitchen with Bertie? – and kisses her firmly on the cheek. Then he stands back, grinning at her and looking profoundly pleased with himself. When she just blinks at him, uncomprehending, he points above her head.

Mistletoe. Of course.

“You had it coming,” he told her. “A person would think you were asking for it, even.”

“A person would be wrong,” Danneel says, blushing fiercely. Feeling the heat in her cheeks embarrasses her more, which just turns her redder.

Jensen’s happy confidence is gone now, and he’s eyeing Danneel uncertainly. It’s an expression Danneel can’t abide. He’s still close enough, she judges, and so she leans up and kisses him back, an inch shy of his mouth. Then she drops down from tip-toe, pats his arm, and says, “This pie needs more whip cream.”

As she passes through the dining room, Gen catches her eye. Gen’s eyebrow rises knowingly. It’s the closest to _I told you so_ that Gen will ever come. 

Once in the kitchen, Danneel stares blindly into the bowl of whipped cream. She can no longer maintain the delusion that she has only strictly platonic feelings for Jensen Ackles. But she can’t talk to him about it, either, at least right now; he’s still living in her apartment. Bad enough that she’s his boss. 

She feels a bit zombie-like the rest of the afternoon. Jared and his students already exchanged gifts before dinner, it turns out, but after Jared sets them up with a poker game at the dining room table, everyone else settles in the living room and passes boxes around. 

Everyone’s gifts for Jensen are eminently practical: binkies and burp rags and tiny colorful unisex outfits and the bottles from Danneel. He reads the card and flashes Danneel a soft, pleased smile that kindles a glowy happiness in her chest. Jared and Gen’s gift includes a gift certificate to Babies ‘R’ Us – “Towards a car seat,” Jared says. "Or whatever."

Jensen looks a little overwhelmed. Gen saves him by patting his arm and says, “I know it’s not much, but don’t worry, we’ll make sure you get a baby shower later. That’s when the real loot rolls in.” She winks at him. Jensen snorts, a sound halfway between a laugh and a sniffle, but he manages a smile.

Eventually the students disperse, except for the local boy, who’s spending the night. Danneel figures it’s time for her and Jensen to take their leave, too; he looks exhausted, probably from all the attention, she judges. Jared packs her leftovers of turkey and mashed potatoes and yams, as well as the turkey carcass. Jensen looks skeptical when he catches sight of it. “Stock,” Danneel explains. “Yummy, yummy soup stock.”

Bertie catches them at the door. “Jensen, you take care of that baby, all right?”

Jensen ducks his head, but he looks pleased. “I will.”

She turns on Danneel. “And _you_ take care of _him_. Feed him lots of soup.”

“I will.” As they head out the door, Danneel tells Jensen, “You see where I get it from.” He laughs.


	4. Chapter 4

Danneel, Jensen, and the rest of her crew survive the post-Christmas rush. Ten days later she helps move Jensen into the Corteses’ garage apartment. It’s easy work; he doesn’t have a lot of stuff. Gen and Jared keep it furnished, which means he doesn’t have to buy a bed or a microwave or a couch. 

Danneel helps him unpack. At one point she looks up from the box of books to see Jensen standing in the middle of his new living quarters and staring into its corners in wistful disbelief, like it can’t possibly be his. Once he seems more or less satisfied by the location of his things, she drags him back to the apartment for one last bowl of soup. “I’ll see you tomorrow, you know,” he tells her over his beef and barley. 

“It won’t be the same,” she says. Or whines, maybe. “Listen, if you need anything...”

“Danneel, I’m less than two miles away, and Gen and Jared live across the yard from me. I’ll be okay.” He’s not laughing at her, not quite, but there’s a smile lurking in his eyes.

Danneel summons up a return smile. “I know you will. You’re a survivor. You’ll be fine.” And he will. She’s quite confident. She helped him out of a scrape, and now he doesn’t need her anymore. That was in fact the whole goal, and she’s pleased for him. She’s proud as punch, in fact; he stands taller now than he did those first few weeks here, and he smiles at the customers more.

Her apartment, when she gets back to it, is very quiet. She really is going to have to think about a cat. Misha volunteers at the animal shelter; maybe she’ll make him help her find one. 

It eases her a bit, though, when Jensen arrives at the café promptly at five twenty the next morning, ready to wrestle with the coffee urn before his eyes are even fully open.

Danneel tries to forget her mistletoe-related epiphany. It’s hard. Usually when she needs to ignore something, she buries herself in work, but that’s no good this time, because Jensen is _right there_. He’s brewing the coffee while she’s putting together the soup; when she’s caught at the griddle, cooking an omelette, he’s at the front selling pastries to Mr. Budziszewski. 

He still has his downtrodden days, it’s true; she suspects they’re half due to hormones and half to, well, a lot of people in his life recently treating him like dirt. One day he’s so subdued she sends up to her apartment directly after closing with tea-brewing instructions; by the time she gets up there, his still-full mug is long cold, its tea bag floating listlessly in it, while he lies in a back-breaking sprawl on the sofa. He wakes up around dinner time, and the only things he says – at long interval from one another, as though they’re completely unconnected – is that he had trouble sleeping the night before, and that he talked to his mom on the phone.

Danneel gets a kick sometimes out of Gen’s agro tendencies; they’re part and parcel with being alpha, Danneel figures. Except every time she gets another snippet of Jensen’s story, in muttered half-sentences or bleary-eyed midnight confession, Danneel ends up wanting to break things. Bones, maybe. It’s not a part of herself she’s much familiar with.

But more days are good ones than bad ones. Jensen takes her teasing and gives as good as he gets, the sparkle in his eye belying the scowl he puts on, and he chats with the customers and confidently sells them coffee concoctions they’d never think to ask for. He tells Danneel about what he’s doing to his garage apartment to get ready for the baby. He’s not her project anymore. He’s sweet and sarcastic, and sometimes he flashes her these smiles that she’s sure no one else gets, and, well. She’s smitten, is what she is.

\--

Finally, after Jensen’s been moved out a week, Danneel gives up and schedules cocoa at Gen’s house, late one afternoon. “Your timing is good,” Gen says at the door. “Celia just went down for a nap, and Jared should be home by five, so we should be home free. And the hot chocolate’s just about ready.”

“Cool.” 

They settles at the table with their cocoa. Danneel stirs the syrup into hers, trying to figure out how to begin. Gen surely knows Danneel’s gearing up to something important; she sips on her cocoa and waits.

Finally, Danneel says, “So I guess you were right. About Jensen.” Gen makes a non-committal, encouraging noise. Danneel bites her lip. “I really like him, Gen.” She pauses and waits for commentary, but Gen only nods, unsurprised. “It’s dumb, because yeah, it’s not like he’d be interested. He has a baby coming and way too much going on, and even if he were looking for romance it wouldn’t be with a beta, even if I gave him soup that one time.”

Gen snorts. “And a place to stay, and a job.”

“Yeah, but that just makes it worse, because I don’t want him to feel like he owes me.” Danneel twists the mug in her hands. “If he ever dated me, I’d want it to be because he wanted to, and that’s almost certainly never going to happen.” She ducks her head. “So I set myself up for disappointment, just like you said I would.”

“You should ask him out anyway.”

Danneel’s head snaps up. “Seriously?”

Gen shrugs. “Get it out in the open, and then you’ll know – no nursing false hopes. Pining’s bad for the soul.”

“I haven’t got a lot of hope to nurse, Gen.” 

“So he’ll say no, and things might be awkward for a few weeks, and then he’ll have a baby and you’ll be the on-call babysitter, and no one will have time to worry about it anymore. As worst case scenarios go, it’s not too bad.”

“No,” Danneel agrees. A tightness that’s been in her chest for weeks loosens. “Okay.”

“You could ask him to that winter gala you’ve been complaining about. Give Steven a break.”

Danneel blinks. “That’s a really good idea, actually.” 

“And maybe you’ll be surprised. If he _were_ interested, you’d never know unless you asked.”

“Oh?”

Gently, Gen says, “He’s omega, Danneel. Pursued, not pursuer. He’s probably never asked someone on a date in his life.”

“It’s not like I have tons of experience, either,” Danneel grumbles. “Most beta guys see it as threatening their manhood when a girl asks them out.”

Gen claps Danneel on the shoulder. “Good luck.”

\--

It takes Danneel a couple of days to summon up her courage. There are vegetables to chop and cauliflower cheese soup to make, and meanwhile Jensen isn’t openly anxious about his sister visiting in a couple of weeks, but he keeps making assurances out of nowhere that everything is going to be fine. Danneel thinks she knows which of them needs more convincing about that.

Finally, though, Danneel finds herself an excuse to go visit Gen and Jared after hours, and once she’s dropped off the pumpkin soup – Jared’s favorite – she goes around the back and knocks on Jensen’s new door.

“Danneel. Is everything okay?”

“No, no, everything’s fine.” Staring him in the face, Danneel thinks this whole idea was ridiculous. Still, she takes a deep breath and says, “I was in the neighborhood—” She thumbs over her shoulder, towards the house. “—and thought I’d drop by.”

“Uh, sure. Sure.” Jensen ushers her in and closes the door behind her. “Since you’re here, you want to see the nursery?”

Jensen leads her with evident pride to the bedroom. There’s a crib in one corner now – “A friend of Jared’s was selling it.” — and a bookshelf filled neatly with items Danneel recognizes from Christmas. “I’ll need a dresser to keep stuff organized, but at least it’s not all over the floor, and I figured for now it looks sort of, I dunno, prepared? Like I’m actually doing something to get ready for this kid besides just, well. Growing.” He rubs ruefully at his belly, which is rounding out pretty obviously these days.

“It looks nice,” Danneel tells him. “And Gen wasn’t kidding about that baby shower, either. There is more baby stuff still to come.”

Jensen slants a sideways glance at her. “You guys don’t have to do that, you know. I’m not... just because my life has kind of sucked recently doesn’t mean I can’t take care of myself. And the kid.” 

“Baby showers aren’t charity, Jensen. They’re... they’re a celebration of your good fortune.” Tentatively, she reaches out and pats at his stomach. He smiles a small, private smile, and she vows to do it more often. “And anyway, we’d do the same for any of our friends, however not-dire their straits.”

Jensen laughs to himself and nods. “Okay. In that case, I’d be honored.”

“Well, good.” Danneel reaches out and squeezes his arm. Then she pulls away and says, “Listen, there’s actually something I’ve been wanting to talk to you about. Could we maybe sit down?” 

Jensen leads them to the couch and then perches on the edge of it. “Is something wrong?”

“No! No, nothing’s wrong.” Danneel rubs thumbs across her knuckles, looking for words. “Look, first, I want to say that this has absolutely no bearing on your job, okay?”

“Okay?” Jensen looks mystified, as well he might. 

It’s important that this be clear, though. “Whatever you say, seriously, the coffee urn is all yours as long as you want it. I want you to feel zero pressure, okay?”

“Sure,” Jensen agrees, eyeing her suspiciously.

“So, um. There’s this thing that happens called the winter gala. It’s just dinner,” she explains, “but it’s a big deal around here. The chamber of commerce only holds it once every three years, and all the local business owners go.”

“It’s the event of the season?” he suggests.

“You laugh, but it’s the truth.” Jensen nods noncommittally, which means Danneel has failed to convey her point. “I’m going because of the café. I wondered if you’d like to come with me.”

“Oh.” Jensen’s eyebrows rise.

Danneel hastens, “It’s fine if that doesn’t sound like fun. Steven’s always up for escorting me.”

“Steven, the guy who fixed my car?” 

“That’s the one. Like I said, family friend.”

“So it’s like a business dinner.”

“Well, um, it could be. Or it could be like a date.” Danneel peeks hopefully at him.

It takes him a moment to get it, and then his eyes widen. “A date? With _me_?”

“I... yeah. Or if that venue doesn’t appeal, there are other places to go in this town. Or Centerville isn’t that far away. I know this great Indian restaurant, I’d love to take you there.”

“Curry makes me nauseous,” he says absently. “Are you... Danneel, are you asking me out?”

“Yes?”

Puzzled, half-frowning, he says, “I’m not the world’s first single father. I don’t need to be _taken care of_.”

“What?”

“Maybe you haven’t noticed them, but since I took those fake cuffs off I’ve had alphas hitting on me pretty regularly, offering their protection and the services of their knot, because clearly I can’t manage by myself.”

“In my café?” Danneel asks, outraged. “They say those kinds of things to you in _my café_?”

Jensen looks somewhat taken aback. “It happens everywhere. Nothing special about the café.”

“You tell me who, because not one of them is getting served my food ever again.” Danneel thought her small town was better behaved than that.

“It’s fine, I’m used to it,” Jensen says soothingly. Danneel is not soothed. Before she can say as much, though, Jensen says, “So you’re not just asking me out because you figure I, you know, need someone?”

“Jensen,” Danneel says sourly, “If I thought you needed an alpha to complete you or whatever, _I_ would not be my first choice.”

He huffs a laugh. “Fair enough. Sorry. I know you wouldn’t anyway. I’m, uh. A little sensitive, I guess. But...” He eyes her carefully. “If not that, then why?”

“Because I like you,” Danneel says. This was not one of the ways she’d imagined this conversation going. 

“But I’m omega.”

Danneel tries to shrug, but she’s strung too tight to manage more than a sad pretense of uncaring. “You’re a guy. That’s all a beta girl’s really looking for. I mean, not that that’s _all_ I’m looking for—” She pulls up, flustered. Jensen waits her out, and finally she ventures, “I’ve only ever dated betas before, and Jensen, do you know what every single beta guy I’ve ever dated wanted to be?”

Jensen wordlessly shook his head.

“Alpha. They were all testosterone and ‘male leadership,’ every one, trying to protect me and get me to bow to their greater wisdom.” She shrugs, tight and bitter. “I haven’t dated in three years. I know there are good beta guys out there, but I kind of gave up looking. But you don’t do any of those things.”

“So what you’re saying is _you_ want to be alpha.”

“No!” Danneel exclaims. Then she sees the twinkle in his eye, and she whaps him lightly on the arm. “No. But it seems like with you, it could be a two-way street.” He nods. Danneel plunges ahead. “And anyway, I just... I like you. A lot. That’s all.”

“Oh,” he says, very softly. Danneel gives him time to let that sink in. Her pulse is beating in her ears. “Danneel,” Jensen begins gently, and her heart falls. “I’m honored. Seriously, you have no idea. Sorry I didn’t get it at first, but you’re so awesome, and it just, it never even occurred to me. But I can’t.”

“I know,” Danneel says. _This_ is how she thought it would go. “You’re having a baby, and maybe you won’t even be here very long, and anyway, you’d want an alpha.”

“Well, I don’t know about the alpha part,” he says, lifting Danneel’s wayward hopes. She yanks them back down; this is not the kind of speech that ends in, _Kiss me, you fool._ “My track record there kind of sucks. But for the rest, yeah. I’m just not in that place right now. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” she assures him. He does look sorry. Before she got here today she worried a lot about potential awkwardness, but it didn’t occur to her that she would make him sad. “I, uh. I just wanted to put it out there. Gen says pining is bad for the soul.” Jensen chuckles. Danneel takes that for a good sign. “And we’re okay?” she asks. “You’ll feel okay coming to work tomorrow?”

He considers that so seriously for a moment that Danneel’s heart rises to her throat. Finally, he shakes his head very deliberately and says, “I can’t quit now. I’ve just gotten your customers used to decent coffee.”

She punches him in the arm.

\--

There is some awkwardness, like Gen predicted. Danneel works hard to treat Jensen the same as always, and she practices tamping her feelings down. It’s not so hard now, with no hope at all to buoy them. She makes herself not notice the way his eyes sparkle when something makes him laugh or the way he smiles ever so kindly at old Mrs. Porter each time she forgets what she came in for. She pretends he doesn’t look at her any differently, now that he knows. It’s easier that way.

\--

Jensen’s sister’s name is Allison, and she appears during the lunch rush one day in late January. She’s slight and blonde and green-eyed, her nose dusted with the Ackles freckles even in the dead of winter and her fluffy pink coat immaculate and apparently brand new. She’s the perky co-ed that Danneel never managed to be in college, and Danneel isn’t entirely sure how she feels about her. 

From the look of him, Jensen isn’t sure how he feels, either. As soon as the rush slows, though, Danneel gives him the rest of the afternoon off and shoos him away – as far as the booth where Allison’s sitting, anyway. Danneel absolutely does not hover near the booth and eavesdrop, much as she wants to. 

The next morning, though, she asks him how the visit is going. “It’s nice,” he says.

Danneel looks up from her half-chopped onion and blinks oniony tears out of her eyes. “You sound surprised.”

“I mean, like I said, we’ve never really talked. But she seems... happy for me?”

“That’s nice,” Danneel agrees, because he sounds like he needs reassuring on that point.

The morning after that, Jensen tells her about an omega solidarity group that Allison’s a part of at her school. It’s political. “She hasn’t told me a lot,” he says, “but it seems pretty important to her. Her college must be teaching her something different than mine taught me.”

“Cool,” Danneel says, for lack of better response.

“I think maybe I’m, I don’t know. A cause, or something? Because of...” His hand brushes against his belly, and his expression sours. “It makes sense, I guess. I didn’t really get why she’d want to visit me.”

“Did she _say_ that?” Danneel asks carefully. Her feelings about Allison are fast solidifying. Jensen only shrugs tightly.

It is not one of the good days. Allison meeting Jensen at the end of his shift doesn’t appear to improve it.

The third day Allison is in town is the day the café is closed, so Danneel doesn’t expect to see her at all. She is thus much surprised when she answers the knock on her door and Allison is on the other side of it, looking anxiously hopeful.

“Hi,” Danneel says warily.

“Danneel,” Allison says. “Look, I’m sorry to bother you, but can I talk to you for a minute?”

“Uh. Sure.” Danneel steps aside to let Allison in. The door closed, Danneel puts the kettle on automatically. If it turns out Allison doesn’t want a cup of tea, Danneel is pretty sure she’ll want one for herself. While the water’s heating, Danneel settles at the kitchen table across from Allison. “So what can I do for you?”

“Is Jensen okay?” Allison blurts.

Danneel blinks at her. “Look, no offense, but I’m not going to talk about my friends to someone I don’t know.”

“Of course. You’re right. I’m sorry.” Allison twists her hands in a knot and tucks them away in her lap. Danneel waits. After a few moments, Allison says, “I just, I can’t get him to talk to me. I thought maybe you could help.”

“I... don’t really know what you’re after.”

Allison heaves in a breath – preparatory to tears, Danneel suspects sourly. “He looks so hurt all the time, and I try to tell him that the family’s being horrible to him, but he cuts me off, and I think he just wants me to leave. And I know we’re not close, but he’s still my brother, and he’s here all by himself, and nobody at home even seems to care. And I just...” Allison sniffles. “I just don’t want him to feel all alone. Omegas gotta stick together, you know? Even if families don’t. Apparently.”

“He’s not alone,” Danneel says, bristling. “He has friends here.”

“Yeah.” Allison attempts a smile. “He talks about you all the time. That’s why I came to see you. I thought maybe you could tell me what to say, so he’d understand.”

“I don’t think _I_ understand.”

Allison wipes at her eyes. “I care about him, is all. And...” There’s a pause. “And it could have been me, you know? I could be the one Dad’s pretending doesn’t exist.”

“Oh.” 

“I want Jensen to be okay. And I guess he is, kind of, isn’t he?” She searches Danneel’s face hopefully.

“I think he’s getting there,” Danneel allows cautiously.

Allison nods. “But I want him to know he has me, too. And I don’t think he wants me.” She ducks her head and her shoulder hunch in, and she wipes at her nose, which doesn’t seem to help the sniffles.

The kettle whistles. Danneel goes and takes it off the burner. She hands Allison the tissue box off the end table and says, “What kind of tea would you like?”

By the time Danneel sits back down with two steeping tea mugs, Allison’s eyes are red but clear, and her nose has quit dripping. “Have you tried telling him all of this?” Danneel asks.

“Yeah. He won’t listen. Anything important, he won’t talk about. He just keeps asking me about school.”

“You mean like your omega solidarity club,” Danneel guesses.

“Yeah.”

Danneel makes a calculated decision. A little bit of fact won’t hurt Jensen, she hopes. “He thinks you’re here because of that. He thinks you’re on some kind of mission – that _he’s_ your mission.”

Allison frowns. “What?”

“That he’s like a cause. You’re here to support him for great justice, or something.”

Allison’s jaw drops. “That’s _horrible_.”

All right. Okay. Maybe Danneel read this all wrong. And Jensen, too, apparently. “Yeah. You can see why he’d be disappointed.”

“But I didn’t say anything like that! He’s the one who keeps asking questions.” Scowling, Allison blows at her peppermint tea. “I mean, yeah, I probably wouldn’t have come if it weren’t for my group. I’d still think, you know. That Dad was right. Or maybe I’d just be scared. But that’s not _why_ I came.”

“You should tell Jensen that,” Danneel says firmly.

“I’ve been trying!”

“Try again.”

“Okay,” Allison says dubiously.

That settled, Danneel asks Allison about school, and if details of Jensen's family and upbringing are scattered here and there, that is none of Danneel's doing. When Allison’s mug is empty, Danneel shows her to the door, repeating her suggestion to try talking to Jensen again. Just as Allison heads for the stairs, she suddenly turns and throws her arms around Danneel. Danneel has to take a moment to gather her wits before responding in kind. 

Later, Danneel calls Jensen and says, “Your sister has something she wants to say to you. I think you might want to hear her out.”

\--

The next morning, Jensen arrives for work looking a little sheepish. “Thanks,” he says.

Danneel bumps her shoulder against his. “No problem.”

\--

The last night of Allison’s stay, Jensen invites Danneel to join them for dinner. “Allison asked me to,” he says. “You made quite an impression on her.”

“I don’t know how. I wasn’t very friendly.”

“I don’t know what to tell you.” Before Danneel can protest further, Jensen adds, “Besides, you’ve fed me so many times. I’d like to return the favor.” Suddenly, his expressions turns pained. “I mean, if you don’t mind. I don’t want you to think... You’re still my friend, and—”

Danneel says yes, if only to end the awful fumbling. Awkwardness: not completely gone yet.

That evening, she navigates through dark, frozen streets. The days may be getting longer now, but this far north it’s still dark by five, and Hilldale’s been suffering through a cold snap this week, temperatures dropping well below freezing and mostly staying there. Good for soup sales, bad for heating bills. At least it’s cold enough that the ice on the roads has started to turn sticky instead of slick. Danneel arrives at the Corteses’ place without incident. She makes a break for Jensen’s door, puffing white clouds of vapor all the way. Jensen grins widely and ushers her in, and Allison waves excitedly from the tiny kitchen. That’s when the odor of cooked roast rolls over Danneel. “Wow,” she says, and takes a big whiff. “That smells amazing.”

“The wonders of the slow cooker,” Jensen says, looking pleased. “Very little cooking expertise required. And Allison did the green beans.”

“I can’t wait.”

Allison contributes well more than her third of the conversation, but that’s okay with Danneel, because it lets her sit back with her quite edible roast and observe. All that stiff tension she saw in Jensen earlier in the week is gone; when Allison admits to a scholarship she’s won for tuition next year, Jensen grins proud as any brother would. It’s adorable.

And that awkwardness Danneel has been navigating – or trying to ignore, rather - since she asked Jensen out seems to be gone as well. It's Allison, Danneel thinks; she's a neutral party around which Danneel and Jensen can orient themselves. He teases Danneel the same as he always has, and it’s so easy between them that over her ice cream Danneel blurts, “Are you _sure_ you don’t want to come to the winter gala with me?” Before he can respond, she adds, “As my business associate. You wouldn’t be the only one. It’ll be fun.” If nothing else, just having him there to mutter asides to would improve the evening immeasurably.

“I thought you were going with Steven,” Jensen says.

Danneel huffs. “Would you believe he’s ‘already spoken for’? I thought we had a standing date.”

“Who’s he going with?”

“He _wouldn’t tell me_. He said I’d find out soon enough. The curiosity is killing me.”

Jensen cackles at her half-earnest pout. Then he shakes his head. “I don’t have the clothes for it.”

“Jared would lend you something. He taught into his eighth month, so he has plenty of nice maternity sweaters and stuff.”

“Yeah, well.” Jensen rubbed at his neck. “I don’t really like the idea of being on display to, like, every important person in town.”

“Oh.” That aspect had not occurred to Danneel. “I’ll kick anyone who’s mean to you,” she offers. Jensen chuckles, but he shakes his head again, and it looks final. Danneel sighs. “Fine. Since you won’t help me in my hour of need, I’ll just have to ask Gen.”

“Now that is a terrifying team-up right there,” Jensen says. “Will the Hilldale Winter Gala survive?” Danneel toes at him under the table. “Ow,” he says, grinning unrepentantly.

Just then, Danneel notices Allison. Allison’s ice cream sits forgotten and melting while she stares at Jensen, wide-eyed. She glances at Danneel and sees her looking, and then she abruptly turns her attention back to her bowl.

\--

It’s a couple of days later that Jensen mumbles into the coffee urn, “I miss her.”

“Hmm?” Danneel says from the till.

Jensen’s quiet for a while, and Danneel’s almost forgotten he said anything when he continues, “I was starting to think it was better if I just pretended I didn’t have any family. But I guess I do. Have some.”

Danneel walks over and draws him around to look at her, and he grins feebly. She squeezes his arm. “I’m glad.”

\--

Gen allows that yes, perhaps she would be willing to wear a beautiful dress and accompany Danneel to eat delicious food at the winter gala. By the glint in her eye, Danneel suspects that she’s been wanting to be asked for a while. So that works out nicely. The day of, Danneel takes part of the afternoon off so that she and Gen can go get their hair done, as Gen convinced Danneel they should do. “It’s the first time I’ve gotten dressed up since Celia was born,” Gen explains. “I want to do it right.” 

Afterwards, freshly up-doed, they go back to Gen’s house for nails and make-up. Danneel helps Gen decide on jewelry – her formal bonding cuffs, of course, but also discreet gold ear cuffs to go with them – and Gen scrutinizes Danneel’s nail and lipstick choices carefully. It occurs to Danneel in the middle of applying her mascara that maybe Gen’s pushing the dress-up factor on purpose to distract Danneel from thoughts Jensen. If Gen _is_ doing it on purpose, then it’s working; this is the biggest girls’ day out they’ve had together in years, and Danneel would have been sorry to miss it.

Finally, when they’re both painted and powdered and pressed in all the right places, Gen has Jared take a picture of them together. “We look spectacular,” she pronounces when Jared shows them the result.

And they do. They really do.

“I have to go show Jensen,” Danneel says.

“Oh?” Gen asks.

“I promised him I would. He says I owe him for sticking him with closing.”

“I _see_ ,” Gen says. She flaps her hands at Danneel. “Then go, you have my leave. But the chariot leaves at five-thirty sharp.”

“It’s _my_ business dinner,” Danneel points out, but she goes. 

She stands at Jensen’s door for a minute or two, getting up her courage. It seemed like a perfectly normal request four hours ago, but now she feels awkward in her finery, like a flamingo, all legs and plumage. Finally she knocks and pushes the door in. “It’s me!” she calls, and steps inside.

Jensen is at the kitchen counter. He turns around and whistles. 

“Clean up nice, don’t I?” Danneel asks. She cocks her hip and strikes a pose.

“Tolerably well,” he agrees soberly, but his eyes sparkle. “Seriously, you look great.”

There’s a note in his voice that Danneel could take the wrong way if she thought about it too hard. Instead she says, “So, it’s worth closing by yourself?”

“Eh.” He shrugs. 

Danneel reaches over and whaps his shoulder. “All right, I have to go. Don’t want to miss the appetizers.”

“Have fun,” he says firmly.

“Do you...” She hesitates. “Do you want me to come by afterward? I’ll tell you all about it.”

He blinks and doesn’t answer right away, and Danneel’s ready to rescind the offer when he says, “Yeah. Yeah, if my light’s still on.” 

“Will do,” Danneel says, and leaves, as if she’s completed unaffected by the warmth of his smile.

\--

“It was _Bertie_ ,” Danneel says as soon as Jensen opens the door to her. “Steven stood me up for _Bertie._ "

Jensen’s lips quirk as he closes the door behind her. “Jealous?”

“Naw. They’re really sweet together, in an extremely understated way. I think he has a crush on her.”

“So you had fun?”

“Yeah.” Danneel takes off her calf-length wool coat, a thrift store find from just after Christmas, and lays it across the end of Jensen’s sofa. “Gen had a ball. And the food was yummy.”

“C’mon. Sit. Tell me about it.” 

Danneel takes a step towards Jensen’s sofa and winces. “Ugh. You know that song about boots that are made for walking?”

“Ye-es?” 

“These are not those boots.” Danneel slips a finger under the strap of her high-heeled shoe, slides it loose, and kicks it off. She does the same with the other one. Then she sinks into the sofa and stretches her toes out as far as they’ll go. “They’re fine for the first half-hour, and then _wham_.”

“Gimme,” Jensen says, patting his thigh.

“What?”

“I give the world’s best foot rubs.”

“Is that so?”

He grins. “My mom swears to it.”

“Oh, well, your _mom_ ,” Danneel begins, enjoying Jensen’s mirth, for the moment undimmed by mention of his family. 

“You’ll see,” Jensen says, unperturbed. “Now put ‘em up.” It apparently doesn’t occur to Jensen that there’s anything unplatonic about foot rubs, and if he doesn’t care, then Danneel is sure not going to bring it up. She twists around until her back is to the armrest, and she slides her foot into his lap, careful not to bump against his stomach. “So,” Jensen says, taking her foot in hand, “tell me all about it.”

She was right; the dinner is much improved when she has Jensen to snort in all the right places. She tells him about the entrée and the tiramisu for dessert – “Worth the price of admission all by itself” – and mediocre wine. He nods, working up and down and back up the top of her foot. She tells him about the speeches. “I’m pretty sure they’re the same every time. And this is only my third time at one of these things.” He thumbs circles into the sole of her foot, first the heel and then the ball. She tells him about Gen, who either won over or cowed into submission everyone within hearing range. 

About then, Jensen starts working circles around her ankle bone. Danneel sucks in a breath. “That is the most amazing thing that foot has ever felt.”

“Told you.” Jensen grins. “Just wait’ll you have a matched set.”

“Ugh,” Danneel agrees coherently. Between the two glasses of wine she had at dinner and the things Jensen’s fingers are now doing to her toes, she is suddenly all out of words. “I’m done. You talk now.” Jensen laughs at her, but he complies. 

He had an email from Allison when he got home today, it seems, and he tells Danneel about it. Allison has an alpha she’s interested in, he thinks, although she’s cagey about it. She enthused a lot about her omega group, and he thinks maybe he’ll look into some of the things she talked about. 

“Yeah?” Danneel asks.

Jensen ducks his head. “Maybe. I dunno. I mean, it sounds like it’s been really positive for her? But it’s from a college group, so probably not really, you know, applicable to me.” He shrugs.

Danneel pushes herself up straighter and says very clearly – with some slight difficulty, which could be the wine or could be just the late night – “Jensen, you are one of the best guys I have ever met, and you deserve all the positivity in the world. It _all_ applies to you.”

“Um,” Jensen says.

He switched feet at some point when Danneel wasn’t paying attention, but now she pulls both out of his lap and sits up. She takes his hands in hers – and yes, he was just using those hands to massage her feet, but whatever. “You don’t deserve any of this crap that people have dumped on you, and anyone who tells you different is an asshole. And stupid.”

“I know,” he says, somewhat to Danneel’s surprise. “I mean, I still get all tied up in it sometimes, the whole mess. But, uh. I’ve got you around to remind me. And Jared, too. And Allison, now.” He flashes her a smile. “You don’t have to worry about me, Danneel.”

“You’re one of my favorite people,” she says. She reaches up and squeezes his shoulder. “I’ll always want to make you okay. It’s a hazard of knowing me.”

“Yeah,” Jensen says fondly. 

The fondness warms Danneel to her core. They sit like that a while, and Danneel is full and warm and sleepy and, okay, a little bit tipsy. She thinks pleasantly of the Corteses’ moderately comfortable couch.

“Danneel?” Jensen says.

“Mmm.”

“Are you still awake?”

She shakes herself. “Yeah, yeah. Sorry, I’ll go. I wasn’t planning to mooch on your couch.”

“That wasn’t... I meant, are you awake enough to talk? If not, it can wait.”

Danneel blinks at him, takes in his uncertain expression, and says, “Let me just get a drink of water.” She picks her way carefully across his floor, and by the time she comes back, she’s downed half a glass and is feeling much steadier. “Yeah. I’m here. What’s up?”

“I’m sorry, I guess that sounded kind of ominous.”

“Kind of,” Danneel agrees.

“I, um.” He meets her eyes. “I’ve been thinking a lot about what you said.”

“I approve, obviously,” Danneel says before she thinks. She grimaces. “Sorry, don’t mind me. What was it I said?”

“About... when you asked me out.”

_Oh_. “Okay...”

“I’m having a baby, Danneel. Do you really want to date a guy with a baby?”

Danneel licks her lips. _Jensen’s_ baby. Squally and stinky and sweet and all-consuming, but Jensen’s. And a little bit hers, maybe. “I think I’d be okay with that.”

“And the omega thing? You’re okay with that, too?”

She gives him a long look. He meets her gaze and holds it. “Would _you_ be okay with it? I know you’ve only ever been with alphas, and I know some omegas are wired alpha-only. Could you deal, being with a beta? I mean, can you see yourself wanting to have sex with me at some point?” Her heart is pounding a mile a minute. “Because I can’t see this ending well otherwise.”

Jensen turns profoundly red. “Not a problem.”

“Really,” Danneel says. “Uh, wow.”

“Really.” There’s a heat in his eyes that she’s not used to seeing. Maybe she hasn’t looked. Jensen coughs. “Look, I can’t be certain how things will go. I can’t... Danneel, I can’t guarantee anything. But... I’d like to try? If you still want to.”

“Seriously?” Danneel asks. “I mean. Seriously? Sorry, I’m kind of... I’m still catching up here. I never. I didn’t think. That you—”

Jensen’s looking more certain now. Smiling gently, he says, “Be my girlfriend, Danneel?” He enunciates the words very carefully. He’s never said them before, after all. “And go out to dinner with me and listen to me grump about pregnancy aches? It’ll be a great time.”

“Okay,” Danneel breathes. “Okay.”

“Okay.” Suddenly, Jensen’s grinning brighter than she’s ever seen. 

Danneel grins back for a few beats, appreciating the happiness in his eyes, the crows’ feet gathered at the their corners – proof that he’s known joy and will know it again. Or maybe that’s the elation talking. “So,” she says. “So, now there can be kissing, yes?” He grins even wider, and she moves across the six inches between them and leans in.

And kissing Jensen is warm and soft and everything she wanted, even when they bump teeth and she pulls back, giggling. “How you doing?” she asks.

“I’m pretty good,” he says, grinning back. “I never kissed a beta before, you know.”

“And how was it?”

“I dunno,” he says thoughtfully. “I’d have to try again. I mean—” His casual front drops. “If you want to, obviously.”

Danneel snorts. “Jensen Ackles, if you had a lap right now, I’d be crawling into it.”

He blinks at her. “Damn it.”

\--

EPILOGUE

“Danneel,” Marta calls from the back. “Telephone.”

Danneel sets Mr. Budziszewski’s raspberry Danish at his table and pours his first refill of the day, mumbles something in response to his comments on the April blizzard headed their way, and scurries behind the counter.

“It’s Jensen,” Marta says. 

Danneel grabs at the phone. “Yeah.”

“I think this is the real thing this time.”

Danneel’s heart just about stops, even though she’s been expecting this call for a week. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. Jared’s taking me to the birthing center right now.”

“Okay, okay, I’ll get my stuff, and I’ll meet you there, okay?”

“You don’t have to come,” he tells her for at least the dozenth time. “Jared’s staying, and anyway it’s just going to be me yelling a lot and cussing out everyone in sight. And there’ll be blood, and then there’s the afterbirth—”

“Jensen.”

“Yeah.”

“My boyfriend is having a baby. There’s no way I’m not going to be there.”

There’s a pause. Danneel wonders if it’s for a contraction. “Okay,” Jensen says softly. “No rush, though. I mean, I’m going to be in labor for _hours_.”

“I’ll be right there,” she promises. She hangs up, spins around, and tells Marta, “My boyfriend is having a baby.”

“I heard.” Marta hands Danneel a paper to-go back and two hot drinks. 

“What’s this?”

Marta shrugs. “You’ll get hungry. And they won’t let him eat at all, once he gets started.” Off Danneel’s startled look, Marta adds, “I’m the oldest of five. Now go.” She gives Danneel a push towards the door.

\--

Jensen was right: it isn’t pretty. He shouts words Danneel had no idea he even knew, and there’s a lot of sweat and other bodily secretions. Despite the less invasive midwife practices Julie uses, Jensen still spends most of the time in pain, which is by far the worst as far as Danneel’s concerned.

But he holds onto her hand, and sometimes she manages to tease a smile out of him in between contractions. There’s nowhere in the world she’d rather be than here.

And at the end of it, there’s a baby. 

He – definitely a he, a quick inspection determines – is checked over for the appropriate number of toes and ears and eyeballs, and a blood sample is drawn. Then Julie gives him back to Jensen, and for the first time in more hours than Danneel can remember, she and Jensen are alone. Even Jared is gone, bundled up by Gen and taken home to get some sleep: “He’s supposed to be teaching people things in less than eight hours,” she said. 

Jensen is clearly torn between exhaustion and his utter fascination with the bundle in his arms. Danneel sits next to Jensen’s bed, more or less upright, in a chair that was never going to be more than marginally comfortable. She should say something to Julie about that. For now she pets Jensen’s arm and admires the whisper of the baby’s breath, in and out and in. “You did good,” she tells Jensen.

He snorts weakly. 

Danneel squeezes his hand. “He’s everything you hoped for,” she says. 

“Yes,” Jensen rasps, gaze still fixed. Danneel leans over and kisses his cheek.

Jensen dozes for a little while. Julie bustles in and stops short just inside the door. Danneel spares a glance in her direction, and sees her friend’s eyes soften, even though she must see this sort of thing every day. Then she approaches the bed, and Jensen startles awake. “I got your test results,” Julie says quietly. 

“And?” Jensen asks.

“You have a little alpha. Congratulations.”

Jensen stares down at his son. “An alpha. Danneel, what are we going to do with an _alpha_?”

Danneel is exhausted and wrung dry and delighted beyond words. “I have no idea,” she says.

[end]

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! If you'd like to give feedback but would prefer to do so on LJ, you're welcome to comment [at the LJ masterpost](http://snickfic.livejournal.com/430249.html).


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